EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

KIRKCUDBRIGHT (pronounced "kir- coo -bree"), hugging the muddy banks of the River Dee ten miles southwest of Castle Douglas, is the only major town along the Solway coast to have retained a working harbour. In addition, it has a ruined castle and the most attractive of town centres, a charming medley of simple two-storey cottages with medieval pends, Georgian villas and Victorian town houses, all built in a mixture of sandstone, granite and brick, and attractively painted up, with their windows and quoins picked out. It comes as little surprise, then, to find that Kirkcudbright became something of a magnet for Scottish artists from the late nineteenth century onwards. It may no longer live up to the tourist board's "artists' town" label, but it does have a rich artistic heritage that's easy and enjoyable to explore.

The most surprising sight in Kirkcudbright is MacLellan's Castle (April-Sept daily 9.30am-12.30pm & 1.30-6pm; HS; £1.80), a pink-flecked sixteenth-century tower house that sits at one end of the High Street by the harbourside. Part fortified keep and part spacious mansion, the castle was built in 1570s for the then-Provost of Kirkcudbright, Sir Thomas MacLellan of Bombie, when a degree of law and order permitted the aristocracy to relax its former defensive preoccupations and satisfy its increasing desire for comfort and domestic convenience. The interior is well preserved from the kitchen (complete with bread oven) to the spyhole known as the " laird's lug ", behind the fireplace of the Great Hall. Sir Thomas MacLellan is buried in the neighbouring Greyfriars Kirk (daily 10am-noon & 2-4pm; key from 7 Castle St), where his tomb is an eccentrically crude attempt at Neoclassicism; it even incorporates parts of someone else's gravestone.

Near the castle, on the L-shaped High Street, is Broughton House (daily: Easter, July & Aug 11am-5.30pm; April-June, Sept & Oct 1-5.30pm; Nov garden only Mon-Fri 11am-4pm; NTS; £3.50), a smart Georgian town house, former home of the artist Edward Hornel (1863-1933), an important member of the late nineteenth-century Scottish art scene, who spent his childhood a few doors down the street, and returned in 1900 to establish an artists' colony in Kirkcudbright with some of the "Glasgow Boys". At the back of the house Hornel added a studio and a vast, glass-roofed, mahogany-panelled gallery, now filled with the mannered, vibrantly coloured paintings of girls at play, which he churned out in the latter part of his career. Hornel's trip to Japan in 1893 imbued him with a lifelong affection for the country, and his surprisingly large, densely packed, wonderful, rambling gardens have a strong Japanese influence.

Before visiting Broughton House, you should really pay a visit to the imposing, church-like Tolbooth , with its stone-built clocktower and spire. Built in the 1620s, the building now houses the Tolbooth Art Centre (Mon-Sat 11am-4pm; June-Sept also Sun 2-5pm; £1.50), which has, on the upper floor, a small permanent display of works by some of Kirkcudbright's erstwhile resident artists, including Hornel's striking Japanese Girl , and S.J. Peploe's Colourist view of the Tolbooth. The ten-minute video gives you a good, succinct overview of Kirkcudbright's artistic heritage. Don't miss the Stewartry Museum on St Mary Street (Mon-Sat 11am-4pm; June-Sept also Sun 2-5pm; £1.50), an extraordinary collection of local exhibits packed into a purpose-built Victorian building on St Mary Street.