Ellisland Farm

Ellisland Farm lies beside the River Nith, about ten kilometres northwest of Dumfries in the parish of Dunscore. The site was first recorded in 1465 when a charter of Melrose Abbey mentioned land called Ellisland. A century later William Roy’s map shows no buildings there, but by 1804 a farm already stood where a ford once crossed the river. The name may come from ‘Isle’s Land’, the neighbouring estate, and nearby Old Dunscore churchyard holds 18th-century graves of the Ireland family who once owned the ground. Robert Burns moved to Ellisland in 1788 after Patrick Miller of Dalswinton offered him a seventy-six-year lease. Burns chose the west-bank farm for its riverside strip of fertile soil and stony fields along the Dumfries road. With his friend James Tennant he inspected the land on a February day and signed the lease that spring. Miller advanced £300 to build a house, byre and cart shed before the family could arrive. Burns married Jean Armour in March, but the couple and their two-year-old son stayed at first with the previous tenant in a cottage near the ruined Isle Tower. The farmhouse Burns built has one storey with garrets for servants. A kitchen, bedroom, west-end ‘company’ room and east sitting-room face the river through a gable window. The hearth in the kitchen carries carved marks meant to keep the Devil from entering, and a blocked fireplace window once aimed him straight back out. The present walls probably stand as they did in 1788, and some panes still show Burns’s glass-scribblings. A spring below supplied fresh water, and the sixty-nine hectares of rough land grew oats and supported Ayrshire cows whose milk yield soon attracted local farmers.