Wigtown, Scotland
Wigtown
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 Wigtown
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| Wigtown shown within Dumfries and Galloway | |
| Population | 987 (2001 Census) |
| OS grid reference | NX435555 |
| Council area | |
| Lieutenancy area | |
| Country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | WIGTOWN |
| Postcode district | DG8 |
| Dialling code | 01988 |
| Police | Scottish |
| Fire | Scottish |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
| EU Parliament | Scotland |
| UK Parliament | |
| Scottish Parliament | |
Wigtown (Scottish Gaelic: Baile na h-Ùige) is a town and former royal burgh in Wigtownshire, of which it is the county town, within the Dumfries and Galloway region in Scotland. It lies east of Stranraer and south of Newton Stewart. It is well known today as "Scotland's National Book Town" with a high concentration of second-hand book shops. It has a population of about 1,000.
Wigtown is the gateway to and main centre of the Machars peninsula.
Due to the North Atlantic Drift (Gulf Stream) the climate is mild and plants normally associated with the warmer climates of lower latitudes can successfully be grown there.
Today Wigtown is known as Scotland's "book town" and is thus compared to Hay-on-Wye in Wales. However, in contrast to Hay-on-Wye, Wigtown's status as a book town was planned, in order to regenerate a very depressed town (the main employers, the creamery and distillery, having closed in the 1990s), although the distillery (Bladnoch) has now re-opened and is distilling its own malt whisky. There was a national search in Scotland for a candidate town.
One 18th-century historian of the county, Samuel Robinson, noted that "the greatest number of houses were of a homely character, thatched and one storey high". Each house, he continued, had a midden in front of it. Bishop Pococke in 1760 also noted the existence of thatched houses. By the end of the 19th century it was said that two houses in the town were hardly the same; some had gable ends, others had large fronts pierced by pigeon-hole windows, while still others had outside stairs. Wigtown was described as the quaintest county town in Scotland.
Town Council improvements in the early 19th century greatly altered the face of Main Street. In 1809 town magistrates resolved to improve the main street at a moderate expense by lifting the pavement and making a gravel road around each side of the street, the outer edge of which was to be 44 feet (13 metres) from the edge of the houses. A "plantation" was to be left in the centre of the thoroughfare, which was later laid out with shrubs and enclosed by a rail. In 1830, the Wigtown Bowling Club obtained a footing in the "plantation", and by the turn of the 20th century the square was used largely by bowlers and tennis players. Much of the square was planted up in the mid-20th century, but in 2002 it was restored to the elegant Georgian open plan fringed by trees.
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Wikipedia