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Museums
in Dumfries and Galloway.

It’s 20:06 in Dumfries and Galloway.
Dumfries and Galloway

Munitions, mines and a camera obscura.

Dumfries and Galloway's museums tell unexpected stories. Learn about the vast munitions factory built at Gretna in the First World War, go underground in a lead mine in the highest village in Scotland, or climb a windmill tower in Dumfries to its working camera obscura. At Whithorn, the museum keeps carved Christian stones from the earliest days of the faith in Scotland. Most are small and easy to fit into a day out.

Dumfries Museum and Camera Obscura→
Stranraer Museum→
Museum of Lead Mining→
Whithorn Priory and Museum→
The Devil's Porridge Museum→
Museum of the day16 hours ago

Whithorn Priory and Museum.

The ruins of the priory and cathedral of Galloway at Whithorn, for 1,000 years a place of pilgrimage to St Ninian, with a museum of early carved stones.

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Lunch13 hours agoDumfries and GallowayThe Globe Inn, Dumfries500 yardsDumfries and GallowayFlourish500 yardsDumfries and GallowayKings Coffee and Books600 yards

Lunch near Dumfries Museum and Camera Obscura.

The three closest tables: The Globe Inn, Dumfries, Flourish and Kings Coffee and Books.

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Museums10 hours ago

Museum of Lead Mining.

An underground mine and three miners' cottages, in the highest village in Scotland.

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From the magazine7 hours agoThe printed copy of Issue 03Issue 03Winter 2021

The Devil's Porridge Museum, at Eastriggs near Gretna in Dumfries and Galloway, is named for Arthur Conan Doyle's nickname for cordite, which young women mixed in the First World War.

Cordite was the propellant that went into the ammunition and shells of the First World War. In 1916 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited HM Factory Gretna, then the largest munitions factory in the world, and saw young women mixing a white, lumpy mixture that he thought looked like porridge. The award-winning museum close to Gretna tells the story of those young women in particular. Judith Hewitt, its manager when the magazine visited, said people think Scottish history is all about clans, tartan and castles. As she put it, 'I think it is surprising that this happened here and that the work was done by women'.

See The Devil's Porridge Museum · Dumfries and Galloway
Did you know4 hours ago

The Galloway Hoard, found by a metal detectorist in Dumfries and Galloway in 2014, held silk from Constantinople buried more than a thousand years ago.

Derek McLennan, a detectorist from Ayrshire, made the find in September 2014. Among the treasures were an early Christian silver cross, silver brooches from Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland, and a gold ingot. A lidded silver pot, still wrapped in cloth, held more, including silk from the area around Constantinople, the city now called Istanbul. The hoard was buried some time in the mid-ninth or tenth century, in the Viking age, and nobody knows why. After a fundraising campaign in 2017, National Museums Scotland bought it for the nation for £1.98 million.

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Stay1 hour agoDumfries and GallowayWren's Nest4.5 milesDumfries and GallowayRose Blair Lodge4.5 milesDumfries and GallowayHeritage Coachman Lodge4.5 miles

Stay near Stranraer Museum.

The three good places closest to it: Wren's Nest, Rose Blair Lodge and Heritage Coachman Lodge.

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MuseumsJust now

The Devil's Porridge Museum.

The museum of HM Factory Gretna, the greatest munitions factory of the First World War, where 30,000 people made the cordite nicknamed the devil's porridge.

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