Ellisland Farm
Farmhouse (18th Century), Farmstead (18th Century), Museum (20th Century)
Site Name Ellisland Farm
Classification Farmhouse (18th Century), Farmstead (18th Century), Museum (20th Century)
Canmore ID 90130
Site Number NX98SW 69
NGR NX 92987 83850
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/90130
- Council Dumfries And Galloway
- Parish Dunscore
- Former Region Dumfries And Galloway
- Former District Nithsdale
- Former County Dumfries-shire
NX98SW 69 92987 83850
For trial excavations (1993), see NX98SW 82.
EXTERNAL REFERENCE:
SMT Magazine - January 1950 - photograph
National Library of Scotland:
MSS/1, no.61 - engraving
Photographic Survey (1900 - 1930)
Photographs by A Brown & Co of sites across Scotland c1900-1930
Photographic Survey (April 1959)
Photographic survey by the Scottish National Buildings Record in 1959.
Publication Account (1986)
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).
