194 Moffat and Upper Annandale. 



At this time there were very few fences dividing marches 

 or fields. What fences there was were either fail dykes, made 

 of sods of turf piled up, or merely a ditch ; but more often the 

 division was by a pit dug at the angles of the march ; and 

 when Bearholm, Miltonhead, Miltonfoot, and Murthat were 

 let the marches are all described by lines of pits. For in- 

 stance, part of Miltonhead is described as " bounded on the 

 north by a new march betwixt this farm and that of Bearholm, 

 beginning at a pitt made at the west side of the River Annan, 

 running westwards by a line of pitts pointing to the north end 

 of an elm bush, on the east side by an old Watergate, and 

 thence the same line continued forward to another pitt," 

 and so on. The same applies to nearly all the farms where 

 the marches are described. This scarcity of fences in Upper 

 Annandole continued into the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century, as I have heard my grandmother say repeatedly that 

 when she was a lassie (in the last decades of the eighteenth 

 century) there was not a fence between St. Ann's Brig (Rae- 

 hills) and Moffat. 



In the lease of Murthat mentioned above there was a 

 clause " reserving to Thomas Parish and his wife a house and 

 yard with a cow's grass and an acre of land, for which the 

 tenants are to have no allowance," and in connection with 

 a house and yard on Kirkpatrick common, in the occupation 

 of Betty Graham and her son-in-law, there is this curious 

 entry : — " This house and yard to be given to James Waugh, 

 late tenant in Murthat, but Bessy Graham to be allowed a bed 

 in the house, and recommended it to the tenants to give him 

 a cow's grass and bitt of land gratis, at least at an easy rate." 

 In 1758 Dr James Hunter, a physician practising in 

 Moffat, along with his brother, took a lease of the farms of 

 Archbank and Clairfoot. The name Clairfoot as a farm has 

 entirely dropped out of recollection, as it is all known now as 

 Archbank. Clairfoot was the part of the present Archbank 

 farm extending from the present bridge at Archbank, and all 

 the ground from there on the east of Hindsgill burn, right up 

 to the top of Swattefell and Birnock cloves. Archbank 

 proper was a very small piece of ground extending from the 

 Heatheryhaugh march on the south, on the east by the Well 



