Last updated 21:41, Wednesday, 12 November 2008

GREAT and wondrous things have taken place below the High Irvine Moss and Auchenrivock Flow as well as below Hagg Hill and Burian Hill.

Huge deluges of rushing waters have been able to flow down the Irvine Burn, Docken Beck and Gaber Gill, each of these cleuchs being able and willing to sweep away all that remained of the Dean Banks.

So Bill Johnstone and The Wanderer decided to “hae a wee gander” before the roadworks had been completed.

We walked past Stubholm and through the Warblaw Bogs which were sodden and muddied just as we had expected but it was good practice for what was yet to come.

We looked for the first small group of rare juniper bushes that should have been growing but that part of the wood had been clear-felled.

We soon dropped down to the Skipper’s Cleuch and took the track past the new large cattle buildings; sheds are too meagre a description.

From Mouldy Hills we walked on to another group of junipers which had all been protected by fencing so were still intact. I saw that this formerly rough and uneven hill trail had been resurfaced with good quality grey whinstone bottoming.

At this point I was rather puzzled because the uphill side of the track was fenced with a number of gates at intervals. But it was a double line of fencing about four metres apart.

The ground in between had been trenched and replaced with a usable surface. We realised this was probably the route of the new water pipe from the Black Esk via the Skippers Bridge.

Then we reached the end of the track at Gaber Gill just above Middleholm (Midlums) and the fine new surfacing had disappeared.

The track became a trail which, in turn, became a path until the surface now consisted of deep, black glaur, which appeared to be always on the move, even before we walked on it.

We began to slither and slip until both the glaur and I slipped into a large, deep, ploughed ditch with steep-angled sides. Consequently, my clean grey trousers were now black grey trousers.

However, I was pleased when Bill accompanied me in the next ditch.

The Dean Bank wood downhill from the water pipeline had been clear-felled over a year ago to facilitate the building of the new road or as it has been termed The Auchenrivock Bypass.

We looked over the dyke and there stood or rather lay a large scarp of bare but rocky ground, stretching for nearly three miles.

The new road seemed to be cutting its route towards Auchenrivock and Old Irvine with its temporary service roads in attendance.

A huge amount of construction has taken place in a relatively short time with a huge amount still to be accomplished.

In the approaching darkness it was too dangerous to walk back along the A7 trunk road to Langholm so we had to return through the mud and glaur.

But this time we learned our lesson and headed a bit higher up the Burian Hill until we reached The Rigg. A known feature of the Burian Hill is the existence of at least three bloomery knowes. Our route along the Rigg took us over one of the small rocky knowes.

It consisted of an area about 100 by 40 metres holding a number of naturally-rounded boulders around a depression in the form of crossed trenches. But it was definitely not a ruined building or a defence.

I found a peculiar stone about the size of a fist but it had a rough texture, rather like iron slag.

Next day I went along to the Langholm Library to investigate and consulted a fairly recent book on the Archaeology of Eastern Dumfriesshire and discovered that more than 1,000 years ago there were four iron bloomeries in the area used for making a rough iron armour, swords and other weapons.

Continuous production steel and Bessemers were not invented until about the 19th century.

A rather primitive method was used. Small nodules of iron ore were gathered from the surface and placed within vast piles of timber and charcoal which were ignited and strong winds directed down trenches or grooves into the pile until days later the pig iron became semi-molten.

It was beaten into flat-shaped blooms to get rid of gases and gaps in this very coarse iron.

Without iron or the various steels there would have been no Industrial Revolution and hence no huge metal ships on the Clyde.

There would have been fewer machines and a very small electrical industry with all its branches. Now most of the steel industry is owned by India.

So it appears that Eskdale had a small hand in the Industrial Revolution.