Cuthbert's other town (probably)
Sep. 23rd, 2023 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustYesterday was productive, but in a rather tedious way: we have made plans for next week's necessary travel, and we have ordered a cooker. Neither of these things is particularly delightful, but they will do, and they will make other things work, so... But I'd rather post some more about our holiday in Galloway, and the days we spent in Kirkcudbright.
My guide book is non-committal about the etymology of the place-name: it dismisses as "popular belief" the obvious explanation that it refers to the 'kirk' or 'church' of Saint Cuthbert, but doesn't describe the alternative 'Caer Cuabrit', the fort on the bend of the river as more than 'possible'. The first church here was, and the parish church still is, like Durham Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Cuthbert, so I'll go with that version until proved otherwise. We went into the church to see a display about Jessie M. King's drawings of the town's buildings, and while we were there also admired the Harrison & Harrison organ, and this sideways view of the church itself:
.
Jessie M. King is one of the many artists for whom Kirkcudbright is celebrated. Dorothy L. Sayers opens her novel, The Five Red Herrings with the declaration "If one lives in Galloway, one either fishes or paints," and the line is much quoted around the town. But that's for another time; the town itself supplies enough to fill this one.
We turned right out of the hotel and walked along to the Tollbooth:
That's the building with the spire. I'm not sure about the significance of the float parked outside it: we saw several of these (though this one was my favourite) and weren't surewhether they were left over from the previous weekend's Art Festival, or in preparation for something else ...The Tollbooth was closed, so we didn't go in, and never got back to it - oh, well, another time. Instead we carried on down to the harbour. I had thought the reason Kirkcudbright was on my list of places to visit was that I had found it in an article about the British seaside: now I can find no trace of that article, and wonder whether I had been reading too much into the description of Kirkcudbright as a 'harbour town'. Which it is, after a fashion, although the harbour is on the river Dee rather than on the Solway coast itself. By some fluke of our daily schedule, every time we caught sight of it, the tide was out. This picture, taken from inside the Harbour Gallery (those artists again) goes some way to mask that:
We had the same problem with the tide at Isle of Whithorn, but it's rather more obvious across the sands of Dee... (not those of the song, which is another river of the same name). Overlooking the harbour is MacLellan's Castle:
which we couldn't go round, because Historic Scotland had detected unstable masonry, and closed it. If you look carefully you may be able to see Rapunzrl leaning out of an upstairs window, left behind by the Art Trail whose theme was 'Kings & queens'.
Instead we visited the Galleries: Kirkudbright has two municipal museums, the Galleries and the Stewartry Museum, and for reasons of thematic coherence I'll describe them in the opposite order to our actual visits. The Stewartry is a proper old-fashioned museum:
with stuffed birds in glass cases, including a rather drab puffin and a pair of bewildered-looking guillemots; a mesolithic harpoon made of deer-antler; an advertisement for Gillones Celebrated Biscuits; and a shell full of pearls from the local freshwater mussels, guarded by a small plastic dragon. Outside the museum, in a small garden, was Odin's Throne:
commissioned, it seems to celebrate an exhibition of the Galloway Hoard in the Galleries ...
We were pretty tired from our day's exploration, but one last picture caught my eye as we returned to the hotel, the essence of Scotland, the thistle triumphant:
My guide book is non-committal about the etymology of the place-name: it dismisses as "popular belief" the obvious explanation that it refers to the 'kirk' or 'church' of Saint Cuthbert, but doesn't describe the alternative 'Caer Cuabrit', the fort on the bend of the river as more than 'possible'. The first church here was, and the parish church still is, like Durham Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Cuthbert, so I'll go with that version until proved otherwise. We went into the church to see a display about Jessie M. King's drawings of the town's buildings, and while we were there also admired the Harrison & Harrison organ, and this sideways view of the church itself:
Jessie M. King is one of the many artists for whom Kirkcudbright is celebrated. Dorothy L. Sayers opens her novel, The Five Red Herrings with the declaration "If one lives in Galloway, one either fishes or paints," and the line is much quoted around the town. But that's for another time; the town itself supplies enough to fill this one.
We turned right out of the hotel and walked along to the Tollbooth:
That's the building with the spire. I'm not sure about the significance of the float parked outside it: we saw several of these (though this one was my favourite) and weren't surewhether they were left over from the previous weekend's Art Festival, or in preparation for something else ...The Tollbooth was closed, so we didn't go in, and never got back to it - oh, well, another time. Instead we carried on down to the harbour. I had thought the reason Kirkcudbright was on my list of places to visit was that I had found it in an article about the British seaside: now I can find no trace of that article, and wonder whether I had been reading too much into the description of Kirkcudbright as a 'harbour town'. Which it is, after a fashion, although the harbour is on the river Dee rather than on the Solway coast itself. By some fluke of our daily schedule, every time we caught sight of it, the tide was out. This picture, taken from inside the Harbour Gallery (those artists again) goes some way to mask that:
We had the same problem with the tide at Isle of Whithorn, but it's rather more obvious across the sands of Dee... (not those of the song, which is another river of the same name). Overlooking the harbour is MacLellan's Castle:
which we couldn't go round, because Historic Scotland had detected unstable masonry, and closed it. If you look carefully you may be able to see Rapunzrl leaning out of an upstairs window, left behind by the Art Trail whose theme was 'Kings & queens'.
Instead we visited the Galleries: Kirkudbright has two municipal museums, the Galleries and the Stewartry Museum, and for reasons of thematic coherence I'll describe them in the opposite order to our actual visits. The Stewartry is a proper old-fashioned museum:
with stuffed birds in glass cases, including a rather drab puffin and a pair of bewildered-looking guillemots; a mesolithic harpoon made of deer-antler; an advertisement for Gillones Celebrated Biscuits; and a shell full of pearls from the local freshwater mussels, guarded by a small plastic dragon. Outside the museum, in a small garden, was Odin's Throne:
commissioned, it seems to celebrate an exhibition of the Galloway Hoard in the Galleries ...
We were pretty tired from our day's exploration, but one last picture caught my eye as we returned to the hotel, the essence of Scotland, the thistle triumphant:
