Ecclefechan railway station

Ecclefechan (Scottish Gaelic: Eaglais Fheichein) is a small village located in Dumfries and Galloway in the south of Scotland. The village is famous for being the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle. Ecclefechan lies in the valley of the Mein Water, a tributary of the River Annan, 6+1⁄4 miles (10 kilometres) south of Lockerbie, five miles (eight kilometres) north of Annan and eight miles (thirteen kilometres) northwest of the English border. The A74(M) motorway runs immediately north of the village and Junction 19 is just northwest of the village. The High Street of the village has a burn which runs through a culvert below it. This culvert was constructed in 1875 by Dr George Arnott at his own expense.

Thomas Carlyle's Birthplace is a house in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, UK, in which Thomas Carlyle, who was to become a pre-eminent man of letters, was born in 1795. The house was built in 1791 by Carlyle's father James and James' brothers John and Tom, stonemasons all. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, registered as a Category A listed building. Architecturally, the home exemplifies 18-century Scottish Vernacular. It first opened to the public in 1881 and remains much as it was then. Many of Carlyle's belongings are housed along with a collection of portraits and photographs relating to his life. Carlyle lived here with his brother John Aitken Carlyle who would go on to translate Dante's Inferno into English. It was from here that Thomas Carlyle walked nearly one hundred miles in order to attend the University of Edinburgh at the age of 13, intending for the ministry.

Hoddom is a small settlement and civil parish in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, dating back to the 8th century.

Dogslacks is a farmstead in the Parish of Middlebie, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in Scotland.

Hoddom Castle is a large tower house in Dumfries and Galloway, south Scotland. It is located by the River Annan, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) south-west of Ecclefechan and the same distance north-west of Brydekirk in the parish of Cummertrees. The castle is protected as a category A listed building.

Brydekirk (Scottish Gaelic: Eaglais Bhride) is a village in Annandale in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland located approximately 4 km north of Annan. The village was a planned the concept of the Paisley-Dirom family of Mount Annan, set around a bridge over the River Annan. Construction began in around 1822.

Middlebie is a hamlet and parish in the historic county of Dumfriesshire in Dumfries and Galloway, south-west Scotland. It is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Ecclefechan, and 6 miles (9.7 km) north-east of Annan, on the banks of the Middlebie Burn. Middlebie Parish consists of the ancient parishes of Middlebie, Pennersax (Pennersaughs) and Carruthers, united in 1609. Middlebie was the seat of a Presbytery from some time after the Reformation until 1743. It was then divided to form the Presbyteries of Langholm and Annan. Middlebie parish is now in the Presbytery of Annandale & Eskdale. It is bounded by the parishes of Tundergarth, Langholm, Canonbie, Half Morton, Kirkpatrick Fleming, Annan and Hoddam. The villages of Eaglesfield, Middlebie and Waterbeck lie within the parish, with Kirtlebridge on its southern boundary. Eaglesfield and Hottsbridge by Waterbeck still have primary schools. The school at Middlebie closed in 1972, nearly a hundred years after it opened. The Eaglesfield building is now just over a hundred years old. The former school in Waterbeck village, built about 1900, is now the public hall. Eaglesfield's public hall was built in 1892–3. Middlebie's old hall (a wooden ex-army building purchased in 1928) was demolished and a new one built in 2001. The West Coast Main Line railway runs through the parish from London to Glasgow. Previously the Caledonian Railway, the line formerly had a station at Kirtlebridge, where the writer Thomas Carlyle would alight before walking up to his parents farm at Scotsbrig above Middlebie. From Kirtlebridge the Solway Junction Railway ran down to Annan and across by the Solway viaduct to Cumbria. It was built to transport iron ore to the Lanarkshire steelworks. In 1841 the population of the parish was 2,154 and about sixty of these people were handloom weavers. There were inns and shops and the Lime Works Blacketridge. Tradesmen listed in 1841 include joiners, shoemakers, tailors, cloggers, masons, millers, carters, grooms, gardeners, dressmakers, straw-hat makers, etc. Today, only Eaglesfield still has a general store and post office. In 1841, as well as 73 farmers, 314 people were employed as agricultural labourers and 60 more as servants. Notable people from Middlebie include Matron Jane Bell who was sent as an orphan to Australia and William Brown (1888–1975), professor of plant pathology and head of the botany department at Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Blatobulgium was a Roman fort, located at the modern-day site known as Birrens, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. It protected the main western road to Scotland. It was one of the "outpost forts" outside the Roman Empire when the frontier was on Hadrian's Wall and was located about 11 miles from the Castra Exploratorum fort (Netherby, Cumbria).

Broadlea henge (grid reference NY 21946 74651) is a Neolithic or Bronze Age monument in the parish of Middlebie, Dumfries and Galloway. It is one of very few henge monuments in southern Scotland. The only other well preserved site is the considerably smaller Pict's Knowe near Dumfries. While Pict's Knowe is a single entrance, Class I henge, Broadlea has two entrances, making it a Class II henge. It measures 50m by 45m inside its ditch, which is as wide as 10m. The banks have been flattened over time but still rise in parts to around four feet high.The henge overlooks the Mein Water valley; the Roman fort of Birrens is located on the opposite side of the valley. The aerial photographs which identified the henge also identified a Roman marching camp, whose ditch passes through the north-west entrance of the henge and out through the south-east entrance.The monument is scheduled as "Birrens to Broadlee,Roman forts & camps & henge".

Annandale (Gaelic: Srath Anann) is a strath in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, named after the dale of the River Annan. It runs north–south through the Southern Uplands from Annanhead (north of Moffat) to Annan on the Solway Firth, and in its higher reaches it separates the Moffat hills on the east from the Lowther hills to the west. A 53-mile (85 km) long-distance walking route called Annandale Way running through Annandale (from the source of the River Annan to the sea) was opened in September 2009.

Annandale distillery is a whisky distillery producing single malt Scotch whisky in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

The Kirtlebridge rail crash took place in 1872 at Kirtlebridge railway station in Dumfriesshire. An express passenger train ran into a goods train that was shunting; 11 people lost their lives immediately, and one further person succumbed later. The cause was a failure to communicate between the station master in charge of the shunting operation, and the signalman. There was not full interlocking of the points, and the block system of signalling was not in use.The location was very close to the point where the present-day A74(M) road crosses the line.