Dalbeattie

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Dalbeattie Town Hall.

Dalbeattie (Gaelic: Dail Bheithe, "Valley of the Birch Trees") is a town in Dumfries and Galloway (formerly Kirkcudbrightshire), Scotland.

Dalbeattie is situated in a wooded valley on the Urr Water five miles east of Castle Douglas. It is at the junction of the A710 and A711 roads and the A745 terminates a mile to the west at Buittle Bridge.

Formerly granite quarrying was an important part of its economy, and the quarry still exists, but work has been consigned to the history books. Dalbeattie granite was used to build parts of Windsor Castle.

Dalbeattie is also famous for being the hometown of William McMaster Murdoch, the First Officer of the RMS Titanic who died when the ship sank in 1912. In Dalbeattie there is a memorial to McMaster's heroism and a charitable prize has been established in his name.

Dalbeattie grew from a small Clachan situated around the ford in the burn, at the bottom of Water Street where the stepping stones used to be. It was on the main coastal road through from New Abbey to Dundrennan, as it wound its way up to the ford on the River Urr, near to the Mote of Urr. The fast flowing burn had already become the site of at least one Mill by 1600, influential local landowners, the Maxwell’s of Munches and the Riddick’s of Little and Miekle Dalbeattie Farms, and the close proximity to the Castles of Edingham and Buittle, also influenced the development of Dalbeattie.

There are indications from Court Records that there was a settlement here as early as 1658 and a further mention in 1747, along with evidence from Presbytery Records that there was a School Master in Dalbeattie in 1751.

The formal beginnings of Dalbeattie were in 1781 when George Maxwell of Munches and Alexander Copeland of Kingsgrange, [also known as the Copeland’s of Colliston], decided to encourage the development of the town by feuing their property. The Maxwells owned the land on the North side of the burn and the Copelands owned the land on the South side. Every feu consisted of a piece of land, fronting a street, large enough to build a house and grow vegetables and keep chickens and pigs. Each feu also had the right to cut turves [peat] from Aucheninnes Moss. This was very important as fuel was scare in Galloway, coal was expensive and there were very few trees, unlike today! The feu duties brought in an income for the landowners and gave security for the tenants.

This attracted more people to the town and the building of the bridge over the River Urr at Craignair in 1797 increased the prominence of the town. The development and rapid expansion of the Granite Industry in Dalbeattie attracted more people to settle in the town. By 1810 work in the quarries was plentiful, and over the next 30 years a lot of trades people settled and founded businesses in Dalbeattie. The Harbour, The Dub O Hass, was flourishing, and Carswells Grain Mill and Biggars Manure Mill both started trading. However the expanded population brought other problems, high incidents of Sickness, including Cholera and Typhoid, and Law and Order issues (Erica Johnston

Dalbeattie Granite works was established in 1820 and was situated in Craignair Street, following a direct route from Craignair Quarry which occupies a prominent position above the town and is the locality's major landmark. Large, good quality Granite blocks were transformed in this yard to form many ornamental monuments - one can be viewed at the Cross in the centre of Dalbeattie. Dalbeattie was also the birth place of the technique of polishing stone to form a shiny surface - a procedure exported throughout the world by the skilled workers of Dalbeattie as they travelled for work when the industry went into decline around 1883. Around 1200 of Dalbeattie townsfolk, including children, were displaced with the influx of cheap granite from Denmark depressing the market.

Several families travelled to America and worked in the Westerly quarry in Rhode Island. The granite extracted from this quarry is blue and a sample can be seen on the monument in the Cross in Dalbeattie alongside a piece of red granite from Aberdeen - both of these quarries were owned by the Newall family from Dalbeattie. More samples of the three colours of this stone can be viewed in the Museum in Southwick Road Dalbeattie.