Dumfries House

Dumfries House is a Palladian country house in Ayrshire, Scotland. It is located within a large estate, around 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of Cumnock. Noted for being one of the few such houses with much of its original 18th-century furniture still present, including specially commissioned Thomas Chippendale pieces, the house and estate is now owned in charitable trust by The Great Steward of Scotland's Dumfries House Trust, which maintains it as a visitor attraction and hospitality and wedding venue. Both the house and the gardens are listed as significant aspects of Scottish heritage.

The estate and an earlier house was originally called Lochnorris, owned by Craufords of Loudoun. The present house was built in the 1750s for William Dalrymple, 5th Earl of Dumfries, by John Adam and Robert Adam. Having been inherited by the 2nd Marquess of Bute in 1814, it remained in his family until 2007 when 7th Marquess sold it for the nation for £45 million due to the cost of upkeep.

Due to its significance and the risk of the furniture collection being distributed and auctioned, after three years of uncertainty, in 2007 the estate and its entire contents was purchased for £45m for the country by a consortium headed by Charles, Prince of Wales, including a £20m loan from the Prince's charitable trust. The intention was to renovate the estate to become self-sufficient, both to preserve it and regenerate the local economy. As well as donors and sponsorship, funding is also intended to come from constructing the nearby housing development of Knockroon, a planned community along the lines of the Prince's similar venture, Poundbury in Dorset.

Dumfries

Coordinates: 55°04′12″N 3°36′11″W / 55.070°N 3.603°W / 55.070; -3.603

Dumfries (ⁱ/dʌmˈfriːs/ dum-FREESS; possibly from Scottish Gaelic: Dùn Phris) is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was a civil parish and became the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South. People from Dumfries are known colloquially as Doonhamers.

Etymology

There are at least two theories on the etymology of the name. One is that the name Dumfries originates from the Scottish Gaelic name Dún Phris which means "Fort of the Thicket". According to another theory, the name is a corruption of two words which mean the Friars’ Hill; those who favour this idea allege the formation of a religious house near the head of what is now the Friars’ Vennel.

History

Early history

No positive information has been obtained of the era and circumstances in which the town of Dumfries was founded.

Dumfriesshire (Parliament of Scotland constituency)

Before the Act of Union 1707, the barons of the sheriffdom or shire of Dumfries (also called Nithsdale) and the stewartry of Annandale elected commissioners to represent them in the unicameral Parliament of Scotland and in the Convention of Estates. After 1708, Dumfriesshire returned one member to the House of Commons of Great Britain and later to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom..

List of shire commissioners

During the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, the sheriffdom of Dumfries was represented by one Member of Parliament in the Protectorate Parliament at Westminster.

After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland was again summoned to meet in Edinburgh.

Dumfries (Scottish Parliament constituency)

Dumfries was a constituency of the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood). It elected one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the plurality (first past the post) method of election. It was also one of nine constituencies in the South of Scotland electoral region, which elects seven additional members, in addition to the nine constituency MSPs, to produce a form of proportional representation for the region as a whole.

From the Scottish Parliament election, 2011, the Dumfries constituency was abolished, with the city being divided between two new constituencies; Dumfriesshire, and Galloway and West Dumfries.

Electoral region

Constituency boundaries and council area

The Dumfries constituency was created at the same time as the Scottish Parliament, in 1999, with the name and boundaries of an existing Westminster constituency. In 2005, however, Scottish Westminster constituencies were mostly replaced with new constituencies.

Member of the Scottish Parliament