The Rationalised Landscape

This photograph is of the Carlingwark Canal, now called the Carlingwark Lane (local word for slow flowing stream). It was constructed in 1765 and cuts an arrow straight course across the Carlingwark and Blackpark mosses. It is nearly two miles long.

It goes with the Charles Oppenheimer  paintings of concrete dams being built (see previous posts). The canal was built to carry marl (a lime rich clay used as fertiliser) from Carlingwark Loch to farms upstream along the Dee/ Ken river system.

Before the canal was cut this is what the landscape looked like.[Taken from National Library of Scotland online maps- Roy's 1755 military survey of Scotland]

Course of Carlingwark Burn.

Carlingwark canal built 1765- from John Ainslie's map 1797

Map 3 

Carlingwark Canal, now a 'Lane' -local dialect word for a stream.
Ordnance Survey Six inch to mile map. Surveyed 1848, plus railway added 1865.

Detail of canal with locks at Glenlochar to by-pass shallow stretch of river.

Present day- Castle Douglas By-pass crosses canal next to the old railway bridge.


Bridge
 

This wooden bridge on a footpath now uses foundations of railway bridge over Carlingwark Canal. The footpath follows the route of the railway line to link Castle Douglas with Threave Estate and Threave Castle.