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.
Lochar, a morass and a stream of S Dumfriesshire. Lochar Moss, which is distributed among the parishes of Caerlaverock, Ruthwell, Mouswald, Torthorwald, Dumfries, and Tinwald, extends 10 miles north-north-westward from the Solway Firth to Locharbriggs village, and varies in breadth between 2 and 3 miles. It is all but a dead flat, from 26 to 70 feet above sea-level, and seems at a comparatively recent period of the human epoch to have formed a navigable inlet of the sea, which, filling gradually with silt and aquatic vegetation, became successively a marshy forest and a bog. Most of it, to the depth of many feet, is soft, spongy, and quaking; and in the days of Robert Bruce it was impassable by any large body of men; but now it is traversed by four lines of good road, and by the Glasgow and South-Western and the Dumfries and Lockerbie railways, and has been so extensively reclaimed that a large aggregate of it is arable, pastoral, or wooded, and more resembles a pleasant valley than a morass. A ridgy tract in it, more than ½ mile long, and 35 acres in area, consists entirely of sea sand. Apparently the earliest portion won from the sea, it seems for some time to have formed an island, and still is called the Isle. A thick stratum of sea sand, which underlies all its moss, and here and there is mixed with shells and other marine deposits, has been found, by excavation, to contain canoes, fragments of vessels, several iron grapples, small anchors, and other relics of ancient navigation. Many large and seemingly aged trees-pine chiefly, but also oak, birch, and hazel-have been discovered in the portions of the moss immediately above the sea sand, and all lie with their tops towards the NE, seeming to have been overthrown by the continued action of impetuous tides and south-western blasts. Much of the morass has long served as turbary, for the supply of peat fuel; and parts of it were burned, in 1785 and 1826, by accidental fire. The villages of Locharbriggs, Roucan, Collin, Blackshaws, Bankend, and Greenmill all lie on or near the margin of the morass; and the village of Trench stands on one of the roads which traverse it.
Lochar Water, rising, as Park Burn, at an altitude of 480 feet above sea-level, flows 18¼ miles south-south-eastward along the boundary between Kirkmahoe, Dumfries, and Caerlaverock on the right, and Tinwald, Torthorwald, Mouswald, and Ruthwell on the left, till it falls into the Solway Firth at a point 2¾ miles E by N of Caerlaverock Castle. It traverses Lochar Moss from end to end, nearly through the middle, so as to cut it into pretty equal halves; and here is so sluggish, or almost stagnant, as generally to look more like a ditch than a stream. At low tide it has 5½ miles further to wind across the sands, through a channel less than 1 furlong broad, before it reaches the open waters of the firth. Its fishing is poor-some trout, roach, pike, and eels above, with sea-trout, herling, and occasional salmon below.—Ord. Sur., shs. 10, 6, 1864-63.
(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)
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| Feature Description: | "a morass" (ADL Feature Type: "wetlands") |
| Administrative units: | Dumfries Shire ScoCnty |
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