An oddly designed old house-tablet recently uncovered from the many coats of plaster and whitewash that had long concealed it, is now a feature of the house adjoining the Carlyle birthplace, and is perhaps the only curious item in the village.
There is a railway station nowadays at Ecclefechan, but the village is probably a quieter place than it was in Carlyle’s early days, when the Glasgow Mail dashed by, and the local coaches enlivened the street twice a day. For one thing, the station lies at a considerable step away, up along what was the new road when Telford made it, so long ago, and called new to this day.
It is a kind of mild hog’s-back ascent out of Ecclefechan and so along the six miles to Lockerbie, passing on the way the farmhouse of Mainhill, where Thomas Carlyle’s father at the age of fifty-seven started to be a farmer, striving there ten years, from 1815 to 1826. Then comes the beautiful park of Castlemilk, seat of the Jardine family, followed by Milk Bridge crossing the river of that name, and the smart suburban entrance to Lockerbie.
LOCKERBIE
The town of Lockerbie is a thriving place, of a neatness and cleanliness altogether remarkable: a change indeed from the time when this rhyme was possible:
Lockerbie is a dirty place,
A kirk without a steeple,
A midden set at ilka door—
But a cantie set o’ people.
New in appearance, with a modern Town Hall in a florid version of the Scotch baronial style, and an air of abounding prosperity. Here, in this considerable place of shops, the Southron who knows not Scotland first discovers what the Scottish nation can do in the way of scones, seed-cakes, plum-cakes, baps, and bannocks, to say nothing of shortbread. It is a liberal education, in its especial way.