Middlebie Parish
Middlebie Parish, according to Rev. Nivison, the writer of the second Statistical Account exhibits an extremely irregular figure and is 9 miles long, and 4 1/2 broad. and contains 40 square miles. Two hundred years ago the parish contained a greater population than it does now, without having a collection of houses large enough to be called a village. Today, Eaglesfield alone has almost half of the parish's inhabitants.
The story of Eaglesfield starts not so much with a place as with a person. In the early fourteenth century one Robert de Eglesfield, probably a native of Eaglesfield in Cumbria, founded Queens College, Oxford. A female descendant married into the Smith family of landed gentry who retained Eaglesfield as a commonly used Christian name. The first Eaglesfield Smith known to have lived locally was born in 1730 and owned Langshaw House, now a nursing home, near Kirtlebridge. His son, also Eaglesfield Smith, apart from leading an eventful life and writing romantic poetry, began to feu out plots on the lands of Flosh and Longriggs sometime after 1810. This was part of the Blackethouse Estate and included over a mile of the new road connecting Springkell via Palmer's Gill Bridge to Kirtlebridge, Annan and the turnpike road from Carlisle to Glasgow.
By 1830 the settlement had acquired its real name of Eaglesfield, but was also earning its alternative, Poverty Row. Many of the inhabitants in the 1830s and 1840s were hand loom weavers, a group of workers whose wages had plummeted with the introduction of mechanised looms. THis image was not helped by local resident Robert Smith, who in 1868 was the last person to be hanged in Dumfries. Around the end of the century, as houses were built, rebuilt and improved, the population grew and prospered and better facilities such as the new school and village hall were built. There has been some infilling and a couple of new roads, but essentially the original plan of the poet-builder of Eaglesfield is still intact.
Kirtlebridge
Kirtlebridge, given its location has always been the public face of Middlebie Parish. Travellers passing between Scotland and England on the turnpike road upgraded by Thomas Telford may have noticed the few scattered cottages and the tree-filled valley of the Kirtle. THe coming of the Caledonian Railway had a dramatic effect on the locality, the station was nearly a mile from the old Kirtle Bridge and better situated to encourage the industrial activity that marked this part of the parish. The old village altered little until the arrival of the dual carriageway and later the motorway.
Middlebie
Middlebie was never more than a few houses gathered about the Church and Manse, although with its role as a religious administrative centre for two hundred years, its connection with the famed Thomas Carlyle and William Ewart Lockhart and its situation close to the major Roman fort at Birrens, it has a significance beyond its population. Historically, there were two presbyteries in Annandale and Eskdale at Lochmaben and at Middlebie.
Waterbeck
The most remote of the four parish villages is Waterbeck. Its history partly parallels that of Eaglesfield; the Carlyle family helped to found the modern settlement at the end of the eighteenth century although they maintained a much longer and closer connection with Waterbeck than the Smiths did with Eaglesfield. The Carlyles were originally tradesmen rather than gentry and it was the employment they provided that attracted new residents. There is a story connecting the two families concerning the breeding of Dandie Dinmont terriers. George Jardine of Waterbeck became interested in the breed in the late nineteenth century, and knew that Bradshaw Smith had the best, but in a jealously guarded local mkennel. It took the intervention of George's employer, Robert Carlyle the second, to arrange for a mating between George's bitch and a Blacket House dog. Eventually another mating produced Waterbeck Watermark, an international champion and the foundation of the Jardine kennel which was still active until recent years.
Middlebie Parish is still, of course, predominantly rural. Little trade and industry takes place outwith the agricultural scene, and although many local residents may travel to work in other parishes, or even another country, they enjoy returning to their pastoral home.