Wigtown

Andrew Symson, a 17th-century minister, suggested the first settlement would have stood on low-lying sands between the present-day Wigtown and Creetown. Wigtown had two ports (gates) which may have been closed at night to form a large cattle enclosure. These were East Port, opposite a site later occupied by the British Linen Bank, and the West Port, which stood opposite the mouth of the High Vennel. Blackfriars, the Dominican friary, was founded at "Friarland" north of the mouth of the Bladnoch, south-east of the town of Wigtown, by Devorgilla in around 1267. Wigtown Castle was in existence by 1291, on flat land down by the River Bladnoch, (outlines clearly seen on an aerial view), whilst…

Jessica A. Fox's Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets (2013) is her account of following her dream and moving from Los Angeles and a job at NASA to help run a bookshop in Wigtown and finding love. Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller, published 2017, Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) and Remainders of the Day (2022) detail his experiences as the owner of The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. Kathleen Hart's Devorgilla Days, published in 2021 is a memoir of life in Scotland's book town, it is a celebration of the community who helped heal her, including the thousands of followers on Instagram where she is known as Poshpedlar. The BBC reported on 2 October 2018…