Holywood, Scotland

Holywood is a village and a wider administrative region (a civil parish) in Dumfries & Galloway in south-west Scotland. The village is 3 miles north of Dumfries, 70 miles south of both Glasgow and Edinburgh, and about 40 miles northwest of Carlisle, England. The parish includes the village of Holywood -- a collection of some eighty houses, with churchyard, village hall, and primary school -- and a rural patchwork of farms, private estates and hamlets covering an area of approximately 9 miles (east-west) by 1-3 miles (north-south).

​

This region has been inhabited for several thousand years as shown by the largest stone circle on the Scottish mainland ('The Twelve Apostles') and archaeological evidence of earthworks, burials, enclosures and discarded stone and bronze tools. Bounded by the River Nith and Cluden Water, it was a well-known religious centre during the Middle Ages with a Premonstratensian abbey, but only hints remain today. Through the 17th century, the region was dotted with mills and tower houses and was a waypoint on the rough wagon routes and river fords connecting hamlets in the region. At the end of the 18th century, it was straddled by a new turnpike road linking Dumfries and Glasgow and a sprinkling of new cottages and agricultural improvements appeared. A century later, the area was served by a rural railway station, post office and telegraph, and steam-driven agricultural equipment was in use. Mains water and electricity arrived in the 1930s.

​