Gazetteer

An extract from the Gazetteer of Scotland published in 1856 provides an interesting insight to the parish of Durisdeer:-

'In the north it is bleak, inhospitable and highland. Hills and mountains press so tumultuously upon the glens, that a tourist, in following a winding path, is puzzled to conceive how an opening among the heights which seem to forbid his progress can exist.

The central, southern and south-eastern sections are comparatively low in surface and beauteous in diversity. Here the Nith diagonally intersects the parish, over a distance including sinuosities of 8 or 9 miles; and, all the way along , it luxuriates in much richness of scenery.

From the narrow pass with shelving or precipitous banks, clad in wood and foiled by rock and scaur, to the broad plain, cultivated like a garden, and screened by a mountain barrier, the basin of the river exhibits nearly every variety of landscape, and astonishes the tourist by the suddenness and the beauty of its transitions.

Near the southern boundary, where the vale is widest stands the gorgeous ducal pile of Drumlanrig surrounded with the fairy land of its demesne'