Arbigland Estate Today
We subscribe to the idea that in order to conserve our heritage we have to be prepared to change a few things.
The estate today is a modern diversified business based on agriculture, property, events and tourism.
Activities stem from beef rearing to beekeeping and forestry to fishing. We hope you find our website user friendly and that you will come and stay with us.
The History of Arbigland Estate
400 million years ago, before man clambered out of the primeval swamp Scotland and England weren’t even on the same continent, something that might account for the nationalist argument!
Between them lay the Iapetus Ocean –what is now the Solway Firth – and the fossils on the estate show that Arbigland was then somewhere near the equator! When the two continents collided the geology of the region was formed and the story is written in the uniquely weird and wonderful rock formations on our shore.
That collision might account for the turbulent history of the area ever since. As very fertile land with a mild climate and a natural harbour the estate would have been inhabited from earliest times. The Iron Age fort known as McCulloch's Castle and several flint scatters survive on the estate to this day.
As part of the ancient kingdom of Galloway, Arbigland saw the Vikings come and go. Their main harbour was at Carsethorn, now a sleepy fishing port on the estate. It remained the major port of the South of Scotland well into the 20th century and 60,000 people embarked there to emigrate to North America in the 19th century.
As far as we know the estate has only changed hands twice since the Middle Ages but little is known of its history prior to about 1700. Its inhabitants would have seen Queen Devorguilla build Sweetheart Abbey as a memorial to her husband John Balliol in 1273 in nearby New Abbey 5 miles up the road.
During the turbulent 1500s Arbigland would have been ripe prey for the border reivers on a cattle rustling raid. In the 1600s Galloway was witness to the rise and bloody put-down of the Covenanters and there are many local memorials to them.
The 1700s saw the Scottish Enlightenment following the Act of Union in 1707 and also the Agricultural Revolution. Arbigland was fortunate that for most of that century the laird was William Craik (1703-98), a polymath who seized the new ideas and put them into practice. Craik designed and built Arbigland House, since 2000 no longer part of the estate, a classical Georgian house in the Adam style completed in 1755. He was also an agricultural improver in the manner of Coke, Townsend and Bakewell. He drained the land, reclaiming some merse from the sea, and laid out the park and fields you see today with their drystane dykes.
It is thought that he was able to afford to do this from the receipts of brandy smuggling across the Irish Sea from the duty free ports on the Isle of Man. An exciseman's report on a seizure of contraband nearby states:
" I would not go so far as to say that the Laird of Arbigland was involved but many of his horses and servants were present!"
Smuggling also provides a link to the poet Robert Burns, who was an exciseman in nearby Dumfries. Burns was a frequent visitor to Arbigland as a friend of the daughter of the house, Helen Craik.
The 18th century also saw the birth of Arbigland’s most famous export: John Paul Jones. Born John Paul, the gardener's son in a cottage on the estate in 1747. After emigrating to America he is credited with being the founding father of the United States Navy. A hero of the revolution he returned to terrorise the coast of his homeland in the American War of Independence. The cottage where he was born is now a museum on the estate, see the John Paul Jones Cottage Museum web site.
The estate has been home to the Blackett family and their forebears the Stewarts since 1852.
