The Manchester and Glasgow Road, Volume 2 (of 2) / This Way to Gretna Green

by Charles G. Harper

Five miles north of Lockerbie, Jardine Hall is passed, with the haunted ruin of Spedlin’s Tower away across the park. In another mile, at Dinwoodie Green, the road again divides into old road and new. The old road, running to the right hand, through the town of Moffat, over Ericstane Brae and down to Elvanfoot Bridge, a distance of twenty-three miles, is an excellent road still, but it ascends rugged and mountainous heights, while the “new road,” avoiding Moffat altogether, is at its highest altitude 500 feet below the summit of the old. Between the two roads on the way to Moffat runs the river Annan, and here and there are glens that at different times gave shelter to Covenanters and horse-stealing rascals. Wamphray Glen was one of the fastnesses of the Johnstones: the locality having from time immemorial been rich in Johnstones and Jardines. There was a Johnstone who lived in the old days at Lockerbie, in one of the numerous defensible towers of the district. He bore a more or less knightly part in the battle of Dryfe Sands, hard by, while at home his gentle lady with her own fair hands dinged in the head of Lord Maxwell with the castle keys.

The new road continues, with few features on the way, on a gradual rise, to Beattock, crossing the Annan at Johnstone Bridge, a pretty wooded scene, with wayside post-office. Beattock was important in the old coaching days, for here, beside the road, in a spot otherwise lonely, stood Beattock Inn. Two miles down the road was Moffat. There was nothing else but that change-house for mail-coach and stage. The house remains even now, but no longer an inn, and adjoining it stands the Beattock station of the Caledonian Railway, which abolished coaching on this road over fifty years ago.

Nowadays there is no house of public entertainment in all the thirty miles between Lockerbie and Crawford, on this modern road avoiding Moffat, except the refreshment room at Beattock station: the village that has in latter days sprung up here being quite innocent of anything of the kind.

XXXII

THE CARLISLE AND GLASGOW ROAD

The town of Moffat, down below, had no place in the scheme of Telford’s Carlisle and Glasgow Road. It had very little importance in the councils of the Post Office; Glasgow, Carlisle, Manchester, and London being places whose needs far outweighed any local discontent; and the new road went straight away from Beattock, leaving the little town aside.

RE-MAKING THE ROAD

Before the beginnings of coaching, when Glasgow made its need of direct and speedy communication with the south heard, the London mail went by mounted post-boys, through Edinburgh. At that time the road to Glasgow went through Moffat and steeply up over Ericstane Brae, where it was improved or “turnpiked,” about 1776, but improved, it would seem, in no very substantial manner, for it is recorded that “seventy carts of merchants’ goods” using it weekly had caused it to fall into disrepair. Such remained the condition of affairs when mail-coaches were established elsewhere, and gave the growing commercial city of Glasgow hopes of acquiring a direct service of its own. Such a service meant much to the Glasgow of that day, already grown commercially important. It was pointed out to the Post Office that already, since 1776, the Glasgow and Carlisle Diligence had found it possible to travel this route; and what was possible to private enterprise should be possible also to Government. To induce the Post Office to establish a mail by this route, through Carlisle, the Glasgow merchants and the Chamber of Commerce went so far as to subscribe handsomely to eke out the slender pay offered contractors, and on this basis the mail was established in June 1788. But the Post Office was not content. The road in general was rough and stony, and the Secretary was for ever threatening to withdraw the coach, if the worst places were not repaired. In 1795, Provost Dunlop was informed that the Carlisle and Glasgow mail might have to be discontinued in favour of the old route by Edinburgh, involving a loss of one whole day. Glasgow appealed to the Government to stay this threatened calamity, and to repair the road south of Elvanfoot. It was pointed out that Lord Douglas had expended £4,000 on the road between Lesmahagow and the Hassockwell Burn, near the Devil’s Beef Tub, and that the city had already done much for it. The road, it was added, was not, after all, a local highway, but part of the great national route, north and south, and, as such, rightly the especial charge of the Government. Going through the wild, little-travelled watershed between Clyde and Annan, it could never be adequately repaired from the proceeds of any tolls it was possible to charge. It was further urged that the Government had itself impoverished the road, the mail-coaches being by law exempt from all tolls, and thus being able to carry passengers more cheaply than the stage-coaches, which paid heavily, and, unable to compete on equal terms, had, between 1788 and 1795, been driven off the route. Thus the turnpikes lost their dues at every turn.

To all this the Post Office turned a deaf ear. The Department knew perfectly well how greatly Glasgow appreciated the expediting of its mails by one day, and was convinced that its merchants would make considerable sacrifices to retain the advantage. The Department was entirely correct. An Act was obtained, at the instance of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, empowering the Evan Water Trustees to make and maintain a new road over the watershed, in place of the old road at Ericstane Brae, described in the Act, George the Third, c. 21, 1798, as “very steep and hazardous for all wheel carriages, and dangerous for travellers.”