TopoGKAPHv or Dumfries. 211 



buildings of the Town about or before 1440, was taken down before 

 the Rebellion, 1715, and rebuilt in better method, viz., an outer, 

 large. Council house, where the common Council meet, and there 

 are some rooms above, divided for Cautionary Pri.soners, and a 

 writing chamber to the Writing Master [i.e.. Town Clerk or writer]. 

 The shops . . . being four [in number]." 



74 Burgh Court IJooks, L'7th April, 1536 (fol. 1(34). "Quo die 

 the inquest dccernis and ordanis all personis qlkis is fundin beirand 

 nychbors pcMttis be brot to the tolburht and thcr put to the alder- 

 man and bailies w' the burdingis; and the saidis peittis thai be fund 

 reidhand beirand to be tane to the merkate cross and ane fire to be 

 maid and the kee of the tolbucht dure to be reidhett in the said fire 

 and laid a^ione the saidis peitbeiraris cheikis conforme to the actis 

 and statutes of the burghe." Peat stealing .seems to have been 

 a common and long-established crime. " Time out of mind," writes 

 Edgar (c. 1746), " the Burrow Officers attended at Townhead and 

 at liochmabengate Port from *2()th June to Lammas, in their turns, 

 an hour in the ev'ning, to intercept the dwellers in Bridge-end, who 

 embezzle and carry away on their backs, loads and burdens of the 

 inhabitants' peats and turfs." 



'''•la The Town Council, having purchased an old house abut- 

 ting the New Council House, began to build the Coffee Hou.se in 

 March, 1731. It was sold by the town in 1755, and the newspaiKMs 

 supplied to the town for it were then stopped. It had replaced a 

 former Coffee House in the High Street above Queensberry Square, 

 purcha.sed 7th March, 1688, and sold 3rd January, 1727. 



"74^ In consequence of a petition presented by the Burgh shew- 

 ing that the inhabitants " had been greatly damnified throw the 

 opennes of the meilmarket being vncovered to the great disadvan- 

 tage of buyer and seller and spoiling of the meil in wet and raine- 

 weather," Parliament passed an Act on 7th August, 1662, grant- 

 ing that an imposition of four shillings upon each sack and load of 

 meal brought to be sold therein towards " the building and main- 

 taining of ane fabrick and cov^er upon the said meilmarket." On 

 21st June, 1664, the Town Council commissioned " Johne Smith 

 mea.sone in Killmawers," to erec-t the market, and it was com- 

 menced in April, 1665. It was (as was its successor in 1804) an 

 open, arched building, for on 21st November, 1670, " in considera- 

 tion that the south wind doth drive fieicely into the meilmercat " 

 two arches at the side near the High Street were to be closed with 

 "fir dales." 



'^''o The Prison was built by order of the Privy Council, and 

 completed 1570-80. It bore the initials of the two bailies, Herbert 

 Rayning and Robert M'KinnolI, on a stone which Charles Kirk- 

 patrick Sharpe built into Knockhill summer-house. This, with a 

 stone from the same building, in.scribed " A Loreburne," was 

 built into the Mid.steople in 1909. The upper storey of the Pri.son 

 was burned on 15th September, 1742. On 3rd September, 1802, 



