You can still see the plan of Thornhill, laid out on the Queensberry estate from 1714 beside the new road from Dumfries to Glasgow, in its grid of wide streets lined with lime trees. At the centre stands the Mercat Cross of 1714, a tall column topped by a winged horse, the Queensberry family emblem. Drumlanrig Castle, the family’s great 17th-century house, is three miles north and is now the seat of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. Morton Castle, a ruin on a promontory above a small loch, is two and a half miles north-east. Near the school there’s a monument to the explorer Joseph Thomson, who lived in neighbouring Penpont; Thomson’s gazelle is named after him.
© Steven Brown / Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
