Topography of Dumfries. 191 



to the Friary, and been well established before the bridi^e was 

 built. Gradually the street became of supreme importance, and 

 Lord Maxwell in 1572 erected at its head his great house which 

 became known as the Castle. '^^'^ 



Bank Street: Assembly Street. 



The other two streets that run directly west to the river 

 are Bank Street and Assembly Street. Bank Street has a 

 very definite origin. It was a passage by the side of a burn. 

 This burn came from the low ground between N. Queens- 

 berry Street and Loreburn Street. Even the lowest ground in 

 the King Street area has been made up and a few feet east of 

 Queensberry Street, crossing King Street, was found a cobbled 

 gutter in 1915, six feet underground. This burn, called " the 

 gutter of causey," found its way south-westwards across the 

 High Street and down Bank Street to the Nith. It ran 

 amid the dung heaps and pig styes that decorated the vicinity 

 of the mean little houses, gathering additions from the 

 Fleshmarket at the north side of Queensberry Square and from 

 the infrequently cleansed market place. The Plainstones 

 must have been a veritable slough, for, says Robert Edgar, 

 " by tradition, before the year 1620 [there was] a place of 

 the street where stood a broad dub or gutter an[d a] thorn 

 tree and a smith's forge till George Rome and George Sharp 

 built these two great tenements [at the Plainstones]." It was 

 then no inappropriate name that was applied to Bank Street — 

 the Stinking \"ennel — though it was also Cavart's Vennel from 

 an adjacent proprietor. Assembly Street was not an ancient 

 street. It came into existence between 1 751-1756, and was 

 known as the " New Entry " at the end of the i8th century. 



The Tolbooth. 



The first building of the High Street and vSouth Queens- 

 berry Street block was also erected in the 15th century. Its 

 date is uncertain, but it is mentioned first in i48i.''2 It was 

 the Tolbooth and was set, appropriately, in the market place, 

 the centre of the town. It was a building with cellars in the 

 basement, four shops on the ground floor, the council 

 chamber being above these. Access to the chamber was by 



