Kirkcudbright

Like many other remote areas during the Second World War, a 4,700-acre (19 km²) area to the southeast of the town and extending to the coast of the Solway Firth, was acquired by the Army in 1942, as a training area for the D-Day invasion.[16][17] The area remains in active use for live-firing exercises. Part of the training area is the Dundrennan Range, a weapons development and testing range. The use of this range for the testing of depleted uranium shells has been controversial.[18][19] The range also contains one of the two surviving A39 Tortoise heavy assault tanks from the six prototypes originally produced. The 32-pdr gun has been removed and the tank is used for target practice. Due to the range's designation as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, removal of the tank to a museum is unlikely.

Broughton House is an 18th-century town house standing on the High Street. It was the home of Scots impressionist artist Edward Atkinson Hornel between 1901 and his death in 1933. The National Trust for Scotland maintain the house and its contents as a museum of Hornel's life and work.

The Stewartry Museum was founded in 1879 and was at first based in the Town Hall until it became too small to house the collections.[20][21] The collection moved to a purpose-built site. It contains the local and natural history of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Britain's earliest surviving sporting trophy, the Siller Gun,[22] is part of the collection, as are paintings by many local artists.

The Tolbooth building is now used as an arts centre.[23][24][25]

The new Kirkcudbright Galleries was officially opened in July 2018 by the Princess Royal. It is situated in the former Town Hall. On display are paintings by the various artists who lived and worked in the town. There is also a gallery for visiting exhibitions, a cafe and gift shop.

Kirkcudbright has for long been a centre for visual artists and is now known as "the Artists' Town".[26] The town's roadside signs and logo include a representation of paint on a painter's pallet. Today, painters, textile artists, embroiderers, ceramicists, photographers, etchers, print makers, sculptors, encaustic artists, willow makers and more all work in or around the town.

Kirkcudbright is home to an artists' collective, who have a shop in the town centre, The PA, Professional Artists Collective.[27] Wasps (Working Artists Studio Spaces, Scotland) occupy two linked townhouses, Canonwalls and Claverhouse, in the High Street.[28] It is also a centre in which many artists open their studios during Spring Fling Open Studios.

The Kirkcudbright Arts & Crafts Trail takes place every summer. This four-day event, finishing on the first Monday in August, allows visitors to see artists' studios and visit places that are normally off-limits to visitors.

Galleries in Kirkcudbright include Kirkcudbright Galleries, formerly the Town Hall, in St Mary Street. Probably the oldest gallery is The Harbour Cottage Gallery.[29] Others include the Whitehouse Gallery, the Ochre Gallery and the High St Gallery.

Kirkcudbright Harbour

1994 wooden sculpture In Memory Of Loved Ones Lost At Sea by Charlie Easterfield in Kirkcudbright harbour

The 1907 novel Little Esson by S.R.Crockett is a romantic mystery involving the artistic community of Kirkcudbright. [30]The title character Archibald Esson is a fictionalised version of William Stewart MacGeorge, Crockett's boyhood friend. The later whodunit Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers also involves the artistic community of Kirkcudbright.[31] In 1975, the book was made into a BBC TV film shot in the town, with Ian Carmichael playing the lead role of Lord Peter Wimsey.[32]

The town also provided locations for the cult 1973 horror film The Wicker Man,[33] several parts of the town can be easily recognised in the film.

Robert Urquhart starred in a 1980 BBC adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, shot on location in Kirkcudbright.

The 2018 mystery novel The Shadow of the Black Earl by Charles E McGarry has scenes set in Kirkcudbright while most of the action takes place in a fictionalised version of Laurieston Hall and surrounding area.

Matt McGinn wrote and recorded "The Wee Kirkcudbright Centipede" which has also been covered by other singers including Alistair McDonald on disc and on his BBC Scotland show " Songs of Scotland", which included a segment filmed on location at the town's Johnston Primary School where McDonald led the children in a dance sequence. [34] [35] [36]

The band Betrayal, which comprised Kirkcudbright musician Stephen Milligan (lead guitar), Mervin Macklin (rhythm guitar) and Stephen McClelland (keyboards), as well as Andrew Black (bass), Blue (vocals) and Marty (drums) released an album "Rattlesnake Waltz" on Liverpool's Probe Plus records in 1987. As reviewed in Q magazine at the time as "This seven-piece outfit from Galloway make their album debut with a strange brew containing a healthy dash of speed metal and a fistful of disparate elements taken from early Genesis, The Lovin' Spoonful, Led Zeppelin, and The Skids. On paper this might seem unworkable but in reality it adds up to a highly individual sound, with tracks like Made, Dead Man's Hand and No Big Thing - where Sue Dring's soaring vocals form an attractive contrast to Steve McClelland's manic synthesizer-providing the high spots. The only obvious drawback to this formula is that by utilising such an unusual variety of influences the band may be limiting their appeal to lovers of the eccentric ..."

Jessie M. King's house, Greengate

Kirkcudbright has had a long association with the Glasgow art movement. Several artists, including the Glasgow Boys and the famed Scottish Colourists, such as Samuel Peploe and Francis Cadell, based themselves in the area over a 30-year period from 1880 to 1910, establishing the Kirkcudbright Artists' Colony. Also among those who moved here from Glasgow were Edward Hornel, George Henry and Jessie M. King. Later another small group of Glasgow-trained artists built their studios across the river at The Stell, including John Charles Lamont and Robert Sivell. Landscape painter Charles Oppenheimer moved to Kirkcudbright in 1908. He is given credit along with artist Dorothy Nesbitt for protecting the Harbour Cottage (art) Gallery from demolition in 1956. Kirkcudbright became known as "the artists' town",[26] although longtime residents considered it a "fishing town". Other artists include:

• Joseph Simpson (1879–1939) British painter and etcher of portraits and sporting subjects.[37] He worked from a studio at 4 High Street, and rented 14a High Street from E A Hornel (1928 – 1929).
• Phyllis Bone RSA (15 February 1894 – 12 July 1972) was a 20th-century Scottish sculptor. She moved to Galloway and lived in later life in Kirkcudbright.[38]
• Landscape and figure painter William Hanna Clarke lived in Kirkcudbright, and many of his works featured the town. He is buried in the town's churchyard and his tombstone was carved by his friend Alexander Proudfoot, a Glasgow sculptor.[39]

• Kirkcudbright has been home to some professional footballers, most notably Bob McDougall, George Cloy and David Mathieson.[40][41][42]

• David MacMyn, Scottish rugby international, was from Kirkcudbright.[43]

Lawrence of Arabia's family lived at Craigville, St Mary's Street, Kirkcudbright between 1889 and 1891

• Malcolm Caldwell, born James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (1931-1978) was a British academic and a prolific Marxist writer. Caldwell was murdered, under mysterious circumstances, a few hours after meeting Pol Pot in Cambodia. His father, Archibald Thomson Caldwell was County Architect for Kirkcudbrightshire from 1950 until his death in 1957. Caldwell was Dux of Kirkcudbright Academy in 1949.[44]
• Composer Cecil Coles (1888 – 1918), killed on active service in World War I, was born in Kirkcudbright.[45]
• Marriott Edgar, the lyricist and poet who wrote, amongst other things, Albert and the Lion for Stanley Holloway, was born in Kirkcudbright in 1880.
• John Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine of Rerrick.
• T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), lived in infancy with his family between 1889 and 1891 in Craigville, St Mary's Street. His brother William George was born here in 1889. [46] In 1891 the family moved to France.
• Merchant Robert Lenox, father of New York City philanthropist and bibliophile James Lenox, born in New York City on 19 August 1800. His personal collection would give rise to the New York Public Library
• Gary Lewis actor, Gangs of New York, Billy Elliot, etc. lives in Kirkcudbright.
• William (Billy) Marshall (1672-1792) died aged 120, King of the Gypsies. Buried in St Cuthbert's Churchyard.

The first stage from Glasgow of the Tour of Britain 2019 ended in Kirkcudbright on 7 September. The winner was Dutchman Dylan Groenewegen.