164 The Carlyle Farm and Dwelling at Birrens. 



tradition bounded his remotest look into the past. That Car- 

 lyle's great-grandfather died at Birrens is evidenced by a 

 horizontal tombstone in the disused kirkyard of I'ennersaughs, 

 worked by his father when a stone mason, and bearing that 

 John Carlyle died at Birrens, May the 11th, 1727, aged 40. 

 The Birrens Roman Station is described by Carlyle as " A place 

 lying all in dimples and wrinkles ; grassy but inarable, with ruined 

 houses if you dig at all ; part of which is still kept sacred in lea 

 by the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, while the rest has 

 been dug to powder in the last sixty or seventy years by the 

 adjoining little lairds. . . The Caledonian Railway," he 

 adds, " now screams and .shudders over the dug parts of Birrens." 

 The station thus described consists of two parts, the Fort proper, 

 and the Annex, and these are now, and have been for a long 

 time, possessed by different proprietors. The latter, with the 

 farm of Fand, was conveyed 11th October, 1664, by James Earl 

 of Hartfell to Thomas Bell, and after several changes it is now, 

 together with the said farm of Fand, the property of Herbert C. 

 Irving, Esq., of Burnfoot. The fort is part of the farm of Broad- 

 lea, and remains in the possession of his Grace the Duke of 

 Buccleuch. 



The Carlyle holding, it would seem, corresponds in area 

 with the part of the station known as the Fort, before described 

 as "grassy but inarable, with ruined houses if you dig at all," 

 the ruined houses referred to being the remains of Roman 

 masonry underlying the sward. It was bounded on the west by 

 the Annex, on the north by the farm of Fand, and on the east 

 by Middlebie burn, on the opposite side of which is Satur. 

 Ownership defines all the boundaries except that on the south, 

 where the Fort is possessed in common with the farm of Broad- 

 lea, but here the Mein Water would appear to have been the 

 dividing line. A modern public road passes northward through 

 the Fort, towards the east, with a stone bridge spanning the 

 Mein Water. Before these modern works existed the Fort was 

 cut off and isolated from the larger farm, and in such a state it 

 would naturally lend itself to the purpose of a separate holding ; 

 that it was so applied is obvious from the circumstance that a 

 dwelling and outbuildings were attached, situated at the south 

 end over the steep embankment. A recent writer says : " The 

 little farm is absorbed now bv a larger one, nor can anything 



