Parish History

Kirkbean Parish is one of the most beautiful in South West Scotland, situated, as it is, in a simple rural

valley. It comprises four main villages, Kirkbean, Carsethorn, Prestonmill and Southerness. The last of

these is predominantly a holiday complex, with the population in the summer increasing greatly

It is bounded on the northeast, east, south and southwest by the Solway Firth, comprising some ten

miles of sea coast and, on its northern extremity, by Criffel which rises to 1,870 feet and dominates the

view northward. Looking out across the Solway Firth, it is possible to clearly see the northwest coast of

England and the Isle of Man.

The church yard at Kirkbean has had all the monumental inscriptions transcribed and mapped and

indexed and these will be added to this website in due corse to assist those carrying out their family

history research.

Carsethorn village used to be a thriving fishing and coastal trading port, and was an important local port

serving Dumfries from the 16th century. With the first mention in 1562, when a ship was loading for

Rochelle and Bordeaux. The 'Carse', as it is fondly referred to, acted as an outport for Dumfries. With the

larger vessels going up river, with the aid of a pilot, on the high tide, to unload there. The smaller boats

unloading at the jetty, these were chiefly coastal journeys to ports either side of the Solway, to Ireland

and to the Isle of Man. After the jetty fell into disrepair, the sandy shore made it safe to beach ships to be

loaded and unloaded from carts at low tide, then float them off on the next rising tide. At a time when

roads inland were no more than rutted tracks, most freight and much passenger traffic was by sea,

something which would only change with the road improvements in the early 1800s.

Scotland's greatest export has not been its whisky, but its hard-working and ambitious people seeking a

better life in the New World. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, emigration to the American and

Australian Colonies reached high levels and newspaper advertisements show emigrant ships sailing

regularly from Carsethorn on the feeder ships to Liverpool.21,000 people emigrated from here in the 18th

century for a better life in the colonies. It is said that, in 1850, 10,000 people emigrated to North America,

7,000 to Australia and 4,000 to New Zealand through the 'Carse', leaving from the jetty which was

constructed in 1840 by the Nith Navigation Commission and used by the Liverpool Steam Packet

Company. The remains of that jetty still stand beside the deep-water channel at the north end of

Carsethorn; it was an L shaped structure of which the longest face allowed the steamers a good pierhead

to come alongside.

In 1775, the ''Lovely Nelly'', captained by William Sheridan, took 82 emigrants to Lot 59 on Prince

Edward Island, Canada. The reason for the families going was given as 'to get more bread' - in Scotland,

they were almost destitute.

A rather grimmer export trade also emerged with the transportation of convicts to Australia. They were

marched down from Dumfries and housed in the barracks at the river's edge. The whitewashed building

remains to the south of the bus-stop in Carsethorn to this day.

The coastal trade reached its peak in the late 1840s with almost 25,000 tons entering the river and

steamboats such as the ''Countess of Nithsdale'' maintained long established links with Liverpool.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the local Captain, John Robson, traded in the ''Defiance'' to Archangel for

timber, but this was in the face of a general decline. The coming of the railway in 1850, along with the

ongoing costs of the many improvements needed to the navigable channel, started a slow decline in the

seaborne trade and, by the early 1900s, very little trade was left.