Within Galloway Forest Park lies Polmaddy, a classic Galloway village before the improvements and clearances of the 1700's and 1800's. Based on subsistence agriculture, such villages supported much larger populations than we see today. Small houses, with associated byres and enclosures, were sited close to the communally organised arable fields while cattle and and other livestock grazed the surrounding hills.

Robert the Bruce found refuge here before his victory against the English at Glentrool. He later rewarded his hosts, the miller and his wife, with freehold of the mill, and the names of nearby sites, such as the King's Well, commemorate the three months Bruce spent as an outlaw in the Galloway Hills.

The agricultural 'improvements' which resulted in todays land use system meant the end of ferm-touns such as Polmaddy. These changes began in Galloway in the early 1700's and spread north the Highlands where their results are known as 'the clearances'. Following the pattern of the English enclosures, landowners began to demarcate land with march dykes and in the interests of expanding sheep production forced the small holding communities to leave and find new lives elsewhere, often abroad.

Polmaddy was finally abandoned in the early 1800's and today the relatively well preserved site at Polmaddy serves as a useful reference point in the process of rural changes which continue today. Depopulation wasn't always popular, however, and the Levellers, landless Galloway people who destroyed the new enclosures by night, at one stage confronted the army. Subsistence farming does still exist in other parts of the world as it has the ability to support a large, stable rural communities but does not produce enough cash surpluses to purchase the many amenities that the modern world has to offer.

There is a trail and a useful leaflet about the Polmaddy settlement with a marked 1 km trail showing the cultivated areas, the houses and byres, water mill and pond, corn kilns, clearance cairns and the Inn which was on the pack road and former pilgrimage route from Strathclyde to Whithorn.

For further information and to request a leaflet contact:

Forestry Commission
Galloway Forest District
Creebridge
Newton Stewart
DG8 6AJ
Tel: (01671) 402420

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