Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017398
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017398
In 1788 Robert Bums took up farming at this small 170-acre (68.8 ha) tenancy on the Dalswinton estate situated on the banks of the River Nith, 1.25km downstream from Friars' Carse. With financial assistance from the laird, Patrick Miller, who was a keen agricultural improver, Bums had some fields enclosed, and the farmhouse built by Thomas Boyd, a local architect and builder (see nos 4, 23). But the farm proved better suited to the creation of poetry than profIt, and in 1791 Bums managed to release himself from the tenancy and what he called 'a ruinous affair' to concentrate on his job as Excise officer. Alongside personal and literary items relating to the poet, the single-storeyed falmhouse retains some original fIttings, including an oven and part of a kitchen range installed by Bums. The granary has also been refurbished as a museum of farming life.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Dumfries and Galloway’, (1986).
