An online walk through Moffat

This short walk through Moffat's town centre will give you a feeling for the history of this busy holiday town. The walk starts at the corner opposite St Andrew's Church, but can be joined anywhere.

Leave the corner and walk towards the town centre.  On your right is the BLACK BULL HOTEL, Moffat's oldest hotel, built in 1568.  It was here in 1683-5 that John Graham of Claverhouse made his headquarters in his relentless pursuit of the Covenanters, and in more peaceful times Robert Burns etched the following words on a window.  "Ask why God made the gem so small, and why so huge the granite, Because God meant Mankind should set the higher value on it."

Just past the BLACK BULL HOTEL and before the bank is an archway leading to the Moffat Museum.  Run by volunteers, it is well worth a visit and will give you a much better impression of Moffat's past than can be achieved on a walking tour.

Turn right at the bank, formally the Meal House, and cross the street to the cemetery beside Chambers Art Gallery and Bookshop.  A plaque on the gate gives information about the graves of several people of interest.  Headstones from before the 18th century were covered with several feet of earth to increase capacity, but some impressive later examples remain.  The church ruins are pre-reformation, but the building fell out of use in the late 18th century.

Return to the street, and just past Chambers Art Gallery and Bookshop, once the Union Bank, you come to the Star Hotel.  Like many High Street buildings it was extended upwards in mid-Victorian times, and now has an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the narrowest hotel in the world.

Turn right into Well Street.  Under the clock tower, in what is now the Butcher's have been at different times the court room and jail, and a school and master's house.  The school closed when the Academy opened on its present site in 1872.  Shops in Well Street have changed hands many times; the wine shop used to be a grocer's, for instance, and some still show traces of an earlier, more elegant age.  The former Antique Centre was a wartime soldiers' canteen.  Forget-me-not used to be a saddlery.

On top of the Music Shop is a statue of Robert the Bruce, a late addition to a fine Victorian building, the two shops beneath once forming The Bruce Tearooms.  Just past Hepburns's bakery shop, on its present site since the last century, is Chapel Street, thought to be Scotland's shortest.  At the end of Well Street is Dowding House, now owned by the R.A.F. Association and providing sheltered housing for retired R.A.F. personnel and their spouses.  It was named after Hugh Dowding (later Lord) who led Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and until 1979 was a boys' boarding prep. school, founded by Lord Dowding's father, and called St Ninian's.

To the right of Dowding House, off Old Well Road, is the Old Well Theatre, home of the Upper Annandale Dramatic Society.  The building, originally a church, has recently been extended and refurbished, and U.A.D.S. now has a home worthy of its performances.

Return to the High Street and turn right.  You will soon reach the Toffee Shop, possibly Moffat's most famous shop.  The distinctive toffee has been made and sold by the Blacklock family for three generations.

Next door is Hetherington's the chemist, reputed to be the longest established dispensing chemist in Scotland. Some of the original fittings and equipment can still be seen inside.  Above the Chemist's and the Toffee Shop is the Bonnington Hotel.  The present building dates only from the beginning of the 19th century, although a hotel existed on the site before that.  The original was run by Dr Johnstone who offered his guests the opportunity to bathe in the water from Hartfell Spa.  He also exported the water to England and abroad.

Next door in what is now Moffat Woollens, is Dickson House, once the home of Will Dickson, who in the 19th century was active with William Wilberforce in the abolition of the slave trade.

The Balmoral Hotel, known at different times and under different ownership as the Spur Inn, the Proudfoot Pension Place & Lodging House, and Caver's Temperance Hotel, was built in the late 18th century.  Originally a coaching Inn, its trade suffered when the new road from Beattock to Elvanfoot (now the A74/M6) was opened and coaches from Carlisle to Edinburgh no longer passed through Moffat.  It is no longer a Temperance Hotel.

The Post Office and the Rumblin'Tum form what was built as Bath Place.  Both have had many uses over the years and have been rebuilt and extended.  The cafe, for much of its time, was a flourishing grocery business.

Ivy Cottage is one of the town's oldest buildings, and Arden House was once the British Linen Bank, who added the impressive sandstone frontage to an existing building.

The extension of the High Street as it leaves the town on its route to Edinburgh, is called Academy Road.  St Mary's United Free church (now closed), so typically Victorian in its design, dominates the street on the right.  It was built in 1892 replacing an earlier church in Annanside.

Returning by the opposite side of the street, the first building of note is the Moffat House Hotel. This fine building, by Robert Adam, was constructed in the mid 18th century to provide a country house for the then Earl of Hopetoun.  It did not become a hotel until the 1930s.

As you walk southwards through the town, you will find it worthwhile exploring some of the smaller streets which leave the High Street on your right.  Moffat has won the Scotland in Bloom and Britain in Bloom competitions several times and is justifiably proud of the community involvement needed to achieve these awards.  To stroll through these tiny streets, some of which lead down to the waterside path, in summer will demonstrate why.  Between Cafe Ariete and Gemini Jeweller's is Syme Street. Is this the narrowest street in Scotland?

In the middle of the High Street is Moffat's famous Ram Statue.  More correctly known as the Colvin Fountain, it was given to the town in 1875 by William Colvin of Craigielands, Beattock, and it provided water for horses and their handlers.  You will notice the ram has no ears and local legend has it that the sculptor killed himself when his error was pointed out to him.  The broad High Street used to accommodate a bowling green but this was moved in 1826, first to a position behind the Town Hall, and later to its present site in Beechgrove.

The Town Hall started life as the Baths Hall, and is still called that by many Moffat residents.  It was built in 1827, water being piped in from holding tanks in the hills behind the town, and visitors and residents alike could "take the waters" for 1 shilling, or 2 shillings if hot.  It presently houses council offices, the library, where portraits of former Provosts hang, and is used by many clubs and organisations for meetings and fund-raising events.

The Annandale Arms Hotel, probably originally known as the King's Arms, was the main staging post in Moffat, although it was probably not from here but from the Balmoral Hotel, that John Goodfellow and James McGeorge left on their fateful journey to Edinburgh in 1831.  You will have seen their graves in the old cemetery, and if you travel north on the A701, a cairn to their memory can be seen about a mile past the Devil's Beef Tub.

The Buccleuch Hotel, like so many in the town, has been extended and refurbished on more than one occasion. It was called Rae's Inn.  On the ground in the car park opposite the Hotel you will see one of several crosses which mark the old market.  There are others beside the War Memorial and outside the Bank of Scotland.

St Andrew's Church, open to visitors during the summer is the parish church.  It was built in 1887 and replaced the "Flying Spur" which was opened in 1790 and demolished when St Andrew's was built. The term "Flying Spur" derives form the winged spur on the coat of arms of the Earls of Annandale and Hartfell, and this can be seen on the Welcome to Moffat signs at the entrances to the town.

You will now have completed, and hopefully enjoyed, your tour of Moffat's centre, but a visit to the town would not be complete without visiting Station Park.  This is about 100 metres beyond the St Andrew's Church, close to which is the site of the terminus of the Moffat to Beattock branch line, opened in 1883 and closed to passenger traffic in 1954.

 

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