Qualla: Kirkcudbrightshire https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kirkcudbrightshire https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire Kirkcudbrightshire: Introduction https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Goose assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Every other Scottish county was run by a sheriff. Not this one. In 1369, when Archibald the Grim - Earl of Douglas and one of the most ruthless men in fourteenth-century Scotland - was given the part of Galloway east of the River Cree, he installed a steward instead of a sheriff to administer it. The arrangement stuck for six hundred years. The locals took to calling Kirkcudbrightshire 'the Stewartry' and Wigtownshire next door 'the Shire,' and well into the twentieth century that was simply how you said where you were from. The county was abolished as an administrative unit in 1975. The name survives in land registration, in lieutenancy, and in the way Gallovidians still talk.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Goose assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kirkcudbrightshire: Novantae and Romans https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit Jim Barton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first people of this corner of southwest Scotland were the Novantae, a Celtic tribe west of the River Nith who long held onto their independence. After Agricola's invasion in 79 AD, the area was nominally part of Roman Britannia, but the evidence for any sustained Roman prese...

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Image: Jim Barton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-novantae-and-romans.mp3 0:06 2 full Kirkcudbrightshire: The Lordship of Galloway https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit caroline legg, CC BY 2.0. Through the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Galloway was a sub-kingdom: the local chiefs became lieges of the Scottish king after Malcolm Canmore killed Macbeth in 1057, but they kept a real measure of autonomy. The Lordship of Galloway was its own thing. Only with th...

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Image: caroline legg | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-the-lordship-of-galloway.mp3 0:06 3 full Kirkcudbrightshire: Smugglers and Free Traders https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit Parrot of Doom, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the Acts of Union in 1707, commercial prosperity returned slowly - but the cleanest economic indicator was the explosion of smuggling. The Galloway coast, with its endless inlets, its tidal flats, and its remoteness from any organised customs presence, was perfect 'free tra...

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Image: Parrot of Doom | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-smugglers-and-free-traders.mp3 0:06 4 full Kirkcudbrightshire: Hills, Burns and Granite https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit MSD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Kirkcudbrightshire is bounded by the Solway Firth to the south, Ayrshire to the north, Wigtownshire west and Dumfriesshire east. Its highest point is Merrick at 843 metres. Three principal rivers drain the county - the Cree, rising in Loch Moan and reaching the sea near Creetown ...

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Image: MSD | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-hills-burns-and-granite.mp3 0:06 5 full Kirkcudbrightshire: The People Who Came From Here https://qualla.com/kirkcudbrightshire/ Photo credit LeCardinal, CC BY 4.0. For such a thinly populated county, the Stewartry has produced an unlikely number of consequential people. James Clerk Maxwell - the nineteenth-century physicist whose equations describe electromagnetism and whose work made the modern world possible - was born in Edinburgh but ra...

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Image: LeCardinal | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/p/kirkcudbrightshire-wp/gctp-kirkcudbrightshire-the-people-who-came-from-here.mp3 0:06 6 full