A vision of Britain through time
A vision of Britain from 1801 to now.
Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.
A vision of Britain through time
A vision of Britain from 1801 to now.
Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.
Ecclefechan (Celt. `Church of Fechan' *), the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle, is a village in Hoddam parish, Annandale, Dumfriesshire. It stands 171 feet above sea-level, ¾ mile ESE of Ecclefechan station, on the main line of the Caledonian, this being 3 ¼ miles WNW of Kirtlebidge, 20 NW of Carlisle, 5¾ SE by S of Lockerbie, 81 S by W of Edinburgh, and 81 ¼ SE by S of Glasgow. At it are a post office, with money order, savings' bank, insurance, and railway telegraph departments, a branch of the Royal Bank, gas-works, 3 hotels, a Gothic Free church (1878; 280 sittings), a Gothic U.P. church (1865; 600 sittings), and a public school; and fairs are held here on the Tuesday after 11 June and the Tuesday after 20 October. `The village of Ecclefechan' (we quote from the Scotsman of 11 Feb. 1881), `situated midway between Lockerbie and the Solway Firth, has been generally identified as the "Entepfuhl" of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. There it is, little altered from what it was when Carlyle knew it in his early days, lying in a hollow, surrounded by wooded slopes, with its little "Kuhbach" still gushing kindly by-where not covered over-to join Mein Water at the foot of the town, before the Mein loses itself in Annan Water, 1 ¼ mile lower down the valley. There are the beechrows; and here, by the side of the road, is the field where the annual cattle fair is held-"undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's culture, whither, assembling from all the four winds, come the elements of an unspeakable hurly-burly." Built along the Glasgow and Carlisle highway, the stage-coach in the old days wended its way night and morning through Ecclefechan; but the cheery horn of the guard is no more heard, and, the railway having passed it by, the village is now probably the scene of less bustle than it was eighty years since. The weaving industry, which at a time less remote, gave employment to not a few men and women, has now almost deserted it, and the quietude of the place has been further increased by a diversion of the turnpike road to the higher ground along the western boundary, in order to avoid the hollow in which Ecclefechan is situated. The inhabitants are now, for the most part, people engaged in agricultural pursuits, and shopkeepers and others who minister to their wants. The village has a particularly neat and tidy appearance, from the fact that nearly all the houses not faced with the red sandstone of the district are regularly whitewashed about the time of the fair. Most of the older cottages and other tenements are said to have been erected by the father and uncle of Carlyle, who, it is known, followed the trade of mason, and who are still well remembered in Ecclefechan. The house in which Thomas Carlyle was born stands on the W side of the main street near the S end of the village. It is a plain two-story building, whitewashed like so many of its neighbours, and may be said to be divided into two parts by a large keyed arch, which gives access to a court and some gardens behind. At present it is occupied by two separate families, who enter their respective dwellings by door-ways on either side of the arch. It was in the northernmost division, in a small chamber immediately over the archway, that Carlyle first saw the light, on 4 Dec. 1795. The room, which is reached from the ground floor by a well-worn staircase of red sandstone flags, is of small proportions-4 or 5 feet wide by 8 or 9 in length-with a bed-place formed in the old style by making a recess in the wall. * Closely adjoining this interesting tenement is a lane, known as Carlyle's Close, in which stood a house afterwards tenanted by Carlyle's father, and in which all the other children were born. Here Carlyle was brought up. This house in the lapse of time has undergone considerable changes; and the Philistinism of Ecclefechan has at last transformed it into the village shambles. The churchyard lies on the W side of the village, 50 yards or thereby along the beech-fringed road which leads to Hoddam Castle. It is only about half an acre in extent; and in the centre of it many years ago stood the ancient church of St Fechan, of which not a stone remains. Close to the churchyard on the E side is a handsome Gothic church in red sandstone, cruciform in shape, with a square clock-tower, which is the most prominent object in the village. This belongs to the U.P. congregation, and took the place of the old Secession church, in which, it is understood, Carlyle was baptized by the Rev. Mr Johnston, who afterwards taught the youthful genius Latin. By the side of the churchyard is a long cottagelike building in a fair state of repair-the old parish school, where Carlyle learnt "those earliest tools of complicacy which a man of letters gets to handle-his class-books" This old school-house, said to have been built with the stones of the ruined church, ceased some five and twenty years ago to be used by the village schoolmaster, who removed to a more com odious building within a stone's cast, which since the passing of the Education Act has been enlarged and dignified with a clock-tower. The old school-house is now a casual poorhouse and soup-kitchen.' In the churchyard itself are headstones to Archibald Arnott, Esq. (17721855), Napoleon's medical attendant at St Helena; to Robert Peal (1692-1749), said to be the great-grandfather of Sir Robert Peel; and, in the W corner, to James Carlyle (1758-1832) and Margaret Aitken (17711853), his second wife, who ` brought him nine children, whereof four sons and three daughters survived, gratefully reverent of such a father and mother. ' Two of those sons have since been laid beside her-Dr John Aitken Carlyle (1801-79), the translator of Dante, and Thomas Carlyle himself, whose funeral on 10 Feb. 1881, a cloudy, sleaty day, was attended by Prof. Tyndall, Mr J. A. Froude, Mr J. M. Lecky, etc. No stone as yet marks his grave, but the churchyard wall was rebuilt and walks were laid out in the winter of 1881-82. Pop. of village (1841) 768, (1861) 884, (1871) 846, (1881) 7 69.—Ord. Sur., sh. 10, 1864. See also Annan, Kirkcaldy, Haddington, and Craigenputtoch.
* Fechin of Fore. probably, the Vigeanus of the Scottish Calendar. who, according to Skene, was an Irish anchorite of the latter half of the 6th century, about which period St Kentigern first fixed his see at Hoddam.
* So the Scotsman, but. according to Carlyle's brother, who still resides in the neighbourhood. it was not in this room. but in that. at. the top of the stair, on the right hand side. that the Sage of Chelsea was born.
(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)
| Linked entities: | |
|---|---|
| Feature Description: | "the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle" (ADL Feature Type: "populated places") |
| Administrative units: | Hoddom ScoP Dumfries Shire ScoCnty |
| Place: | Ecclefechan |
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