Bentpath

Bentpath.

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Bentpath is a small village between Eskdalemuir and Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It is located on the River Esk and has a church and a library.
This is Thomas Telford country. There is scarcely any aspect of the village and surrounding area that does not have some connection with the great engineer.

The farm of Glendinning, some five miles to the north up the Meggat Water valley, is where Telford was born in August 1757. He was still a baby when his father died and his mother had to re-locate with her only child further down the glen to a cottage at Crooks. A cairn was erected at Glendinning in 2007 to mark the 250th anniversary of Telford's birth.

Next to Glendinning, shortly after the Telfords moved to Crooks, a whole new community called Jamestown was established for the mining of antimony, a metallic element useful as an ingredient in alloys. As a boy in the same valley Telford would have been well aware of and fascinated by the industrial activity. At its busiest the Westerhall Mining Company accommodated some forty miners and their families in the new village. But the mining operation did not last beyond the end of the eighteenth century and now all traces of the abandoned settlement have gone.
A legacy of the miners continues to this day in Bentpath, however: Westerkirk Library. The present building dates from 1860 but the library collection is much older. In 1793, inspired by an initial gift of 23 books, the miners decided to start a savings plan for adding to their reading resource. 'We, the miners in this place,' they resolved, 'finding the Books sent us by the Company and others will tend greatly to our Improvement, have thought proper to Advance Five Shillings each man for purchasing more Books.' In his will Thomas Telford left one thousand pounds to the library.
Outside the library is the Telford Monument, a big Galloway granite structure incorporating seats and a bronze portrait. It was erected in 1928.

Taken from The Dumfriesshire Companion by Haig Gordon.

www.dumfriesshirecompanion.com-
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