“The Most Bracing of Seaside Resorts”: Portpatrick as a Holiday Destination

Recently, an acquaintance told me that he once took a holiday at Portpatrick. This happens surprisingly often. For such a small place Portpatrick seems to be a widely known and frequented holiday destination. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, for the history of Portpatrick as a seaside resort goes back nearly 150 years, and many thousands of people will have sampled the attractions of the village over that time. In this article, I will trace the development of Portpatrick as a place for holidays, day trips and excursions, and how it has adapted, like the British seaside as a whole, to changing tastes and circumstances.

The classic view of Portpatrick from the northern cliff steps, showing most of the features that make it an attractive resort

The Rise and (Partial) Fall of the British Seaside Holiday

“The sea air and sea bathing together were nearly infallible, one or the other of them being a match for every disorder...Nobody could catch cold by the sea, nobody wanted spirits, nobody wanted strength” (Jane Austen: Sanditon)

The British love of the seaside dates back to the eighteenth century, when ‘taking the waters’ became a fashionable therapy across Europe for all kinds of physical and mental ailments. On the continent, and to an extent in Britain, this led to the growth of spas, which took advantage of natural mineral springs. In Britain, with its extensive and relatively easily accessible coastline, sea bathing became a popular alternative, and the well-off began to frequent newly-founded seaside resorts. Sometimes they stayed in hotels, but more often rented houses, transporting their families and servants en masse, sometimes for a month or more during the summer. Resorts became social as well as wellness centres, and seaside promenades became places to be seen and to socialise with one’s peers.

The seaside also met the fashionable aesthetic taste for the ‘sublime’. Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon, set in a fictional south coast resort, gently mocks the Georgian fondness for the seaside as both a health cure and an aesthetic experience. Sir Edward Denham, trying to impress newcomer Charlotte Heywood,

“began, in a tone of great taste and feeling, to talk of the sea and the sea shore – and ran with energy through all the usual phrases employed in praise of their sublimity, and descriptive of the indescribable emotions they excite in the mind of sensibility”.

Nonetheless (and Jane Austen was herself very fond of the seaside), resorts, or ‘watering places’, as they were known, were flourishing in Britain by the early years of the nineteenth century. At this time, they were still the preserve of the rich and idle; the mass of the population had neither the time or the money to travel away for holidays. This changed, however, as the century progressed, with the coming of steamships, and then railways. These gave access to the seaside to the growing masses of the working class from the cities of the industrial revolution. As John Walton put it,

“The earliest days of cheap travel for the masses saw the seaside opened out to all who could afford the journey, which often cost much less than a day’s wages for a skilled workman”.

Blackpool became a magnet for the textile workers of Lancashire. In Scotland, steamships on the Clyde were the first vehicles for seaside visits, and resorts such as Rothesay and Largs became popular with Glasgow workers taking trips on a Saturday or Sunday, while Portobello and North Berwick were railway destinations from Edinburgh. The working-class day trippers and excursionists were inevitably regarded with distaste by the upper-class seaside residents and visitors, who seized on occasional episodes of drunkenness and violence to tar all such incomers with the same brush. In practice, most excursions were well organised by paternalistic employers, church organisations or the temperance movement, and the majority of working-class visitors were well behaved and appreciative (an early organiser was Thomas Cook, whose first excursion in 1841 was a railway trip from Leicester to Loughborough, for a temperance rally).

By the end of the nineteenth century, a middle class of ‘white collar’ workers had begun to emerge, with the time and money for longer holidays, and working-class day trips were also beginning to expand into overnight stays. This happened first in Lancashire, as textile workers began to acquire more disposable income, and employers acquiesced in granting (unpaid) time off from work. Tension between wealthy, middle class and working class seaside holidaymakers increased, and local authorities in seaside resorts had to decide whether to encourage working class tourism, or to try to remain ‘exclusive’. Resorts such as Blackpool went firmly down the road of catering for the working classes, and cheap boarding houses and workers’ entertainments proliferated. This led to the better off abandoning such resorts as transport options increased; the middle classes patronising further-flung resorts, out of the reach of the workers, and the rich holidaying abroad.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the expansion of the seaside holiday industry. Popular resorts acquired infrastructure, including piers, theatres, cinemas, pavilions and swimming pools. Resorts advertised themselves on their facilities and their (perceived) natural advantages. A famous poster from 1908 proclaimed, “Skegness Is So Bracing”, seeking to make a virtue of its windswept location. The rise of cars allowed greater flexibility to those who could afford them, and eventually led to the decline of rail excursions. In the twenties, sunbathing became fashionable, driven by the example of the French fashion designer (and early influencer) Coco Chanel, and acquiring a tan became a popular seaside (non)activity.

In 1938, legislation was passed granting all workers paid annual leave. This led, following World War Two, to the heyday of the British seaside holiday. A large majority of the population took to the seaside for a week or fortnight in the summer, the better off staying in hotels and the rest in boarding houses (which gradually rebranded as Guest Houses). Class distinctions were maintained, the working classes heading en masse to Blackpool, Cleethorpes, Margate, Rhyll, etc, while Devon and Cornwall became popular among the middle classes in England, and resorts in Fife – and Galloway — attracted Scots.

Even during this purple patch, however, the later relative decline of the British seaside holiday was presaged. A survey of attitudes towards holidays carried out in 1949 found that seaside visitors found traditional boarding house holidays restrictive, and facilities poor. Many would have preferred a different, more exotic holiday (with better weather), but were constrained by time and money. This began to change in the 1960s, when air travel became cheaper and package holidays to European resorts, especially in Spain, became accessible to all classes. By the end of the twentieth century, holidays had radically altered.

Figures from 2019, before the pandemic (probably temporarily) revived ‘staycations’, illustrate the contemporary pattern of holiday taking. In that year, there were 58.7 million holiday visits abroad, mostly to EU countries, with Spain still the most popular destination. By contrast, there were 46.4 million holiday trips taken within England during the same year. Just one-third were to seaside resorts, the same proportion as city breaks, and the majority were of 1 to 3 days duration. 40% of overnight stays were in hotels or motels and just 7% in guest houses or B&Bs, while nearly 50% of stays were in self-catering accommodation (holiday lets, second homes, caravans and camping). A quarter of all trips were to South West England. In Scotland, the seaside accounted for around a quarter of holiday trips, with the mountains and lochs alternative attractions. Overall, while the British seaside was still a popular destination in 2019, it was largely frequented by the middle classes enjoying second or third holidays, while main holidays were predominately taken abroad (though it must be noted that some 12% of the population took no holidays at all). The traditional working-class boarding or guest house holiday had all but disappeared, leading to economic deprivation in those resorts which had specialised in such accommodation.

So ends my ‘Cooks Tour’ (pun intended) of British seaside holidays. We will now move on to consider how Portpatrick developed as a resort, from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Portpatrick as a Holiday Resort

The Nineteenth Century: In 1791, Rev John McKenzie, author of Portpatrick’s entry to the First Statistical Account of Scotland, wrote:

“The sea bathing is admirable...no situation can be better calculated for a watering-place, if the current rage for them continue to prevail as at present”.

His view was echoed by Rev Andrew Urquhart, author of the entry to the Second Statistical Account in 1845:

“The purity of the sea-water here would render Portpatrick a desirable watering-place in the summer months, if baths were erected and pains taken to improve the bathing-ground”.

However, these recommendations were not pursued at the time, as the future of Portpatrick was seen as a major port connecting the mainland to Ireland. It was not until the final quarter of the nineteenth century, when ambitions for the port had been abandoned, that attention began to turn to the potential of the town as a holiday destination.

The railway reached Portpatrick in 1862, with the opening of the line from Castle Douglas that allowed through trains from Dumfries, Carlisle and ultimately the rest of England. In 1877, the town was connected to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with the opening of the line from Girvan to Challoch Junction, near Dunragit. Such improved communications made Portpatrick accessible for tourists, and in the 1880s and 1890s, articles began to appear in the Scottish press expounding the virtues of Portpatrick as a 'watering place’.

At first, its clientele were the ‘propertied classes’, who could afford to stay in hotels, or to rent houses for the summer. By 1880, Portpatrick had four hotels. The Downshire Arms was the largest, and next to it was the Cross Keys, which later merged into its larger neighbour. Further up Main Street was the Commercial Inn, and the Crown, the only one still operating today, overlooked the harbour on North Crescent. A number of houses were available for rent, along Main Street and South and North Crescents, or on the cliffs overlooking the harbour. Some, like Fernhill and Mount Stewart, were built in the 1870s apparently specifically as (in today’s parlance) holiday lets. Others, such as Harbour House and the villas on South Crescent and Main Street, were older, but were modernised for well-off visitors. As elsewhere in the country, many were run by women, often widows assisted by unmarried daughters, such as Elizabeth Edgar, a seaman's widow who in 1891 ran a 'house to let' on South Crescent, assisted by her 40-year-old daughter Isabella. Other single female villagers found employment in the holiday trade, as domestic servants and laundresses, including Jane Smith, a former needlewoman, who in her 50s took to laundry work from her cottage in Colonel Street when the home-working embroidery industry petered out.

Visitors’ Lists published in local newspapers give a flavour of the type of holidaymaker that Portpatrick attracted in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1881, the Galloway Advertiser reported “an almost unprecedented array of fashionable names”. To give a few examples: ‘Lagwinnan’, the house at the southern end of Dunskey Street (which was much bigger then than it is now), was the summer home of Sir William Montgomery-Cunninghame, an army officer and landowner from Maybole, who had been awarded the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War and was also M.P. for Ayr Burghs. Mount Stewart was taken by the Wedderburn-Maxwell family of Glenlair near Corsock, relatives of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell, and they were followed by Rev Dr James Charles, Minister of Kirkcowan, and his family. Fernhill was occupied by the family of James Drew of Doonhill near Newton Stewart, whose profession was Estate Factor. Sea Bank House, on South Crescent, was occupied by the family of George Rennie, owner of an oil foundry in Pollockshields. In 1892, Harbour House welcomed the family of Arthur French-Brewster, an Irish landowner whose sons joined the party from Eton College. Many holidaymakers travelled quite short distances from their homes in Galloway or Ayrshire, but Edinburgh and Glasgow were also well represented, along with travelers from Ireland and England.

The recreations on offer were little different to those available in Portpatrick today. The promenade, which had been constructed in the 1830s to support a tramway used in building the harbour, was the focus of the town, and it was reported that “the pier on an afternoon has quite a gay appearance”. Footpaths were maintained to Dunskey Castle and to Sandeel and Lairds Bay, and Dunskey Glen was open to visitors. Holidaymakers could experience the sublime, in the form of the violent storms that periodically battered the coast, and the rapidly deteriorating state of the abandoned harbour was an attraction and talking-point.

Dunskey Glen Walks have been a popular attraction since at least the 1880s...

...Generations of visitors have left their mark on the glen

Sea bathing was the original attraction of coastal resorts, and Sandeel Bay was a popular bathing spot. In Victorian times, the sexes were meant to be strictly segregated while bathing, with women using bathing machines, huts on wheels that were pushed into the sea to allow them to enter the water in privacy, dressed in voluminous gowns. Men, by contrast, frequently bathed naked on the open beach. How bathing was organised at Portpatrick is not reported. There were bathing machines on the beaches at Stranraer, but what happened in the seclusion of Sandeel Bay has stayed in Sandeel Bay.

Sandeel Bay was once a prominent sea-bathing spot. In the 1940s there was a tea room on the slope to the right of the picture. Fewer people bathe there now, but the author has swum there (and was heartily stung by a large jellyfish)

The tennis courts in Portpatrick were opened in 1889, and the bowling green in 1893, on the site of the former harbour station. Visitors could hire boats from the local fishermen for sightseeing or angling trips, and transport could be hired to visit local attractions such as Castle Kennedy and the Mull of Galloway. Finally, for rainy days, there was a library and reading room, situated in Trinity Hall in Colonel Street, owned by the Free Presbyterian Church.

Portpatrick also became a destination for day trips and excursions. As an example, in 1895 the Belfast Central Presbyterian Association advertised an excursion by steamer to Stranraer, followed by a coach ride to Portpatrick, returning to Belfast on the same day. Occasional railway excursions were also run.

The Early Twentieth Century: In 1900, Charles Lindsey Orr-Ewing became Laird of Dunskey (and followed Sir William Montgomery-Cunninghame as M.P. for Ayr Burghs). Orr-Ewing made improvements to Portpatrick that sought to enhance its status as a resort. In 1902 he demolished the unsightly old cottages that lined Blair Street and moved the fishing families who had lived there to new (but smaller) flats at the far end of Hill Street. In their place, he built a terrace of genteel houses that sought to attract a better class of resident. Heugh Road was constructed, and gradually acquired up-market villas. In 1904 the village gained piped water and electric light – and that sine qua non of Scottish resorts, a golf course; one of over 200 built in Scotland between 1870 and 1914. Then in 1905 the formidable Portpatrick Hotel was built on the northern cliff. The railway company played its part by increasing the number of trains on the branch line from Stranraer from two return trips per day to six (reduced to four in 1914), and extended the platform at Portpatrick station to accommodate long excursion trains.

Improvements initiated by C.L. Orr-Ewing included the genteel houses of Blair Terrace (built in 1902)...

...and the mighty Portpatrick Hotel, opened in 1905

At the same time, the characteristics of those holidaying in Portpatrick were changing. As noted above, by the early twentieth century a “white collar” lower middle class was developing, with sufficient free time and income to take an annual holiday. This group sought a better class of destination than the mass-market resorts frequented by the working classes. Portpatrick was never likely to become one of the latter. It was too small, too far from the industrial cities and, importantly, the Sabbath was scrupulously observed, meaning that there was no rail or steamer transport on Sundays, the working classes’ one day off. But it was accessible and genteel enough to attract “white-collar” holidaymakers, and boarding house accommodation began to be provided to supplement the town’s established hotels.

Some of this accommodation came from the houses previously rented by the upper middle classes. These drifted away from Portpatrick, lured by better transport links to resorts in Europe. Houses such as Mount Stewart, Lagwinnan and Carleton House (on South Crescent) became boarding houses; their housekeepers becoming landladies. Other boarding houses were purpose built, such as South Cliff (next door to Mount Stewart and opened in 1907). By 1915 there were at least eleven boarding houses in the village.

Mount Stewart (above left) was built in the 1870s and was originally a 'holiday let' for well-off visitors, before becoming a boarding house and later a licensed hotel and restaurant. South Cliff, to its right, was built in 1907 as a boarding house and is now, like much else in Portpatrick, a modern-day holiday let

Rickwood private hotel was built in the 1870s as a house for the Factor of the Dunskey Estate

During the 1900s an Improvement Committee of local worthies was established and for many years oversaw the development of the resort. An advertising committee co-ordinated publicity for the town’s hotels and boarding houses. The railway companies also sought to attract visitors through advertising and the provision of excursions. The Portpatrick & Wigtownshire Joint Railway Company published a guidebook, Tours in Galloway, each year from 1898 to 1915, which included Portpatrick among other Galloway attractions. Special train services and half-holiday excursions were run on Wednesdays and Saturdays between Portpatrick, Stranraer and Castle Kennedy, and special excursion fares could be had for trippers from Belfast and elsewhere.

We know little about those who holidayed in Portpatrick in the early twentieth century, save for a brief newspaper report from 1910 about one William Lord, a 58 year old teacher from Manchester, who was staying in a boarding house along with his wife. The couple took a walk across the cliffs to Killantringan Lighthouse, where the unfortunate Mr Lord was taken ill, and subsequently died.

Another sad death occurred in 1909, during the annual works outing held by the Ferguslie Thread Mills of Paisley. Some 2000 women and girls arrived at Portpatrick in four special trains. They were well entertained, despite poor weather, but while waiting for the return home, an 18-year old girl named Rachel Douglas fell onto the track and was killed by a train. This tragic incident was commemorated by a motif of a pair of scissors carved into the edge of the station platform (and still displayed in the grounds of Portpatrick school).

The Later Twentieth Century: The provision in Portpatrick of hotels, ‘private hotels’, boarding and guest houses and B&Bs shifted over the years, with establishments coming and going, but the basic attractions of the town as a resort changed little. Sandeel Bay remained the main bathing spot, and for a time in the 1940s boasted a tea shop and changing facilities. The only new visitor facilities established were the putting green, on land that had originally housed the Admiralty works, and was later a market garden, and the amusement arcade in the former Drill Hall. Portpatrick remained a quiet, rather middle class resort. There was little nightlife. Stranraer had two cinemas, which were doubtless patronised by holidaymakers in the evenings or on wet days, but no theatre or nightspots. In 1935, my great-uncle, Frank Dicks, who owned a general store in Stranraer, set up a dance hall, restaurant and nightclub, optimistically named the Ritz and unpromisingly housed in a former Reform school in Dalrymple Street. The venture quickly failed, and poor Uncle Frank was bankrupted. There were apparently no further attempts to provide such night entertainment in the area, but in the 1950s the Portpatrick hotel advertised “dancing to our resident band”.

In 1923, the Portpatrick & Wigtownshire Railway became part of the mighty London Midland and Scottish, which continued to promote Galloway as a holiday resort. Advertisements sold Portpatrick as “the most bracing of resorts” – a rather backhanded compliment. Regular excursion trains ran at weekends from Glasgow throughout the first half of the century, with Sunday services being introduced from 1927. However, the rise of motor transport dealt a death blow to the Stranraer to Portpatrick branch line, and in 1950 it became the first railway in Galloway to close down.

In 1945, Lagwinnan Boarding House was put up for sale, and the advertisement gives a flavour of the facilities provided in Portpatrick at the time. It had twelve bedrooms, three reception rooms, three W.C.s (one outside) – and just one bathroom. There were apparently no takers for Lagwinnan as a going concern, and much of it was subsequently demolished, the remainder becoming a private house.

During the century, self-catering accommodation grew, in particular the establishment of caravan sites on land overlooking the sea, and (for a time) on the site of the former railway station. In 1984, the Southern Upland Way was established, with its western terminus in Portpatrick, and in the 1990s, the promenade was given a facelift, with widened pedestrian and seating areas giving the village a (sort of) Continental feel.

The promenade was renovated in the 1990s. The Harbour House, in the centre of the picture, was a 'holiday let' in the late 19th Century before becoming a boarding house, and is now one of Portpatrick's six current licensed hotels

Conclusion: Portpatrick Today

I have been holidaying in Portpatrick for over fifty years – and during that time it hasn’t changed much. Shops, restaurants, guest houses and hotels have come and gone, but the core attractions are the same as they ever were. However, the recent closure of the Downshire Arms hotel seems to mark a watershed for the village. In the 1880s, the Downshire Arms was the largest hotel in Portpatrick and it was reported that visitors “would find on the table the best of everything, served in a style equal to the most fashionable London hotel”. But now it has joined the growing number of the village’s buildings that have become self-catering holiday lets.

I own a holiday home in Portpatrick myself (albeit one that is very small, and has been in my family for over sixty years) and therefore cannot be holier-than-thou about the proliferation of self-catering accommodation. It is of course a trend that has been accelerating in holiday resorts across the country, driven by a desire for more flexible, individualistic holidays, and fuelled by the rise of websites such as Airbnb. In many ways, Portpatrick appears today to be as thriving a resort as it ever was. But as self-catering takes over more and more of the village, the question of how tourism squares a with thriving local community will doubtless become more pertinent over the next few years.

 

But despite this ongoing controversy, the fact remains that Portpatrick has long had an allure for those seeking a tranquil and sublime holiday.  We will leave the last word to an unnamed correspondent from 1890:

"It may be asked, what is there to do? Well, pretty much nothing, only one never wearies of wandering along these beautiful cliffs, and looking down upon the ever-surging sea...This paper in fact could have been headed 'An Idle Holiday'. But, after all, is not a thorough rest a sine qua non of a holiday? And those requiring such will get it here to their hearts' content".

Sources Used

Cunningham R (2004) Portpatrick through the Ages. Dumfries: Alba Printers

Durie A (1994) The Development of the Scottish Coastal Resorts in the Central Lowlands, 1770-1880. The Local Historian 24(4): 206-216

Thorne HD (2005) Rails to Portpatrick. Wigton: GC Books 

Walton J (2000) The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century. Manchester University Press

Visit Britain GB Tourism Survey 2019

Census returns and Valuation Rolls available at Scotland’s People

Articles available at the British Newspaper Archive

 

The Old Statistical Account of Portpatrick by the Rev. John McKenzie (1791)

The New Statistical Account of Portpatrick, by the Rev. Andrew Urquhart (1845)

The Third Statistical Account of Portpatrick by John Muir (1960)

The Stranraer to Portpatrick Railway: The Line that should not have been Built

It was customary in the 19^th century that when a new railway line was opened, a ceremonial train would carry the line’s directors, shareholders and local dignitaries from the far end of the route to the beginning, accompanied by the sounds of bands playing and crowds cheering, followed by a sumptuous meal and many toasts to the success of the new venture. Thus it was that on 11^th March 1861, a special train set off at 9.00 for Castle Douglas to mark the inauguration of the Portpatrick Railway. This was to be no local branch line, but a major inter-city route, as its original title was the “British and Irish Grand Junction Railway”. The construction of the line was to be accompanied by major improvements to the harbour at Portpatrick, providing a state-of-the-art port that would take advantage of the short sea crossing between Britain and Ireland. Income would be supplemented by the railway and shipping lines winning the Post Office contract to transport mail between the two lands. At the celebratory lunch at the Douglas Arms hotel, the chairman of the company, Lord Dalrymple (later the 10^th Earl of Stair) proposed the toast, “Success to the Portpatrick Railway”.

Except that all was not as rosy as it seemed. The special train began its journey at Stranraer, as the line from Portpatrick had not been completed. The works to improve the harbour at Portpatrick had not yet begun. The Postmaster General was silent on whether the mail contract would be given to the short sea route. In the event, Stranraer became the port for Ireland, not Portpatrick. The half-completed harbour at Portpatrick became a white elephant, and the railway between Stranraer and Portpatrick was reduced to a branch line. In this article we will trace the convoluted history of the railway from Stranraer to Portpatrick – the unwanted final few miles of the ‘Port Road’, as the Portpatrick Railway was known.

The railway arrives at Portpatrick. Trains emerged from a deep curving cutting and steamed along the hillside above the village to the station at the top of Main Street

“The Fatal Allure of the Short Sea Route”

Look over the sea from the promenade at Portpatrick on a clear day and you will see Northern Ireland, just 18 miles away. In the 19^th century, as Fraser McHaffie put it, this short sea route had a “fatal allure” for those vying to make money from travel between Scotland and Ireland. In the days of sailing ships, sea travel was slow, uncomfortable, unreliable and sometimes dangerous, and many travellers preferred to minimise the time they spent at sea. This gave the route from Portpatrick to Donaghadee an advantage, and in the first half of the century there was considerable traffic of passengers, goods and livestock, and it was the chosen route for the Royal Mail to Ireland. A harbour and pier had been constructed at Portpatrick by John Smeaton in the 1770s, and in 1821 work started on a new harbour, designed by John Rennie, who also designed a new, enlarged harbour at Donaghadee.

The coming of steamships further enhanced the Portpatrick to Donaghadee route. In 1825, two steam packets, the Dasher and the Arrow improved both the speed and reliability of the mail crossings. However, the short sea crossing was not without its problems. The weather in the North Channel was often severe, leading to disruption of the service. In December 1830, Dasher was driven onto rocks south of the harbour and wrecked in a storm, with a female passenger killed. Progress on completing the harbour was slow, and Rennie's piers were sometimes damaged by severe weather. The harbour area was cramped and the depth of water was shallow, leading to doubts that Portpatrick could accommodate future generations of steamships. Local opinion was divided as to whether Portpatrick was the best site for a port, with some promoting Stranraer and others Cairnryan, both longer voyages but easier crossings and more accommodating harbours.

The coming of the railways added a new dimension to the debate. Railway companies began to be formed in Scotland in the early 1840s. Glasgow and Edinburgh were linked in 1842, and Scotland was linked to England in 1848, with the opening of lines from Carlisle via Carstairs and from Berwick along the east coast. A network of connecting lines began to be established, including links from the major cities to coastal ports. These speeded up transport, including the passage of the Royal Mail. In 1848, the mail from London to Ireland was routed via the newly completed railway to Holyhead in North Wales and by sea to Dublin. Then in 1849, a Glasgow Shipowner, George Burns, dealt a hammer blow to Portpatrick by offering to transport the mail from Scotland to Ireland free of charge, taking advantage of the new rail link from Glasgow to Greenock, from where his ships sailed to Belfast. As well as saving money, this proposal would save time, as the speed of the railway more than made up for the longer sea crossing. Burns’s offer was accepted, and the regular steam packet service from Portpatrick to Donaghadee was suspended.

The only way that Portpatrick could win the mail back was by providing its own railway link. In 1850, the Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle railway opened, and in 1859 a service was established from Dumfries to Castle Douglas. But some years before, Gallovidian landowners and businessmen had proposed a railway from Castle Douglas to Stranraer and Portpatrick, linking Galloway to the rest of Britain, provided the government agreed to finally complete the harbours at Portpatrick and Donaghadee, and to restore the Scotland to Ireland mail service. Negotiations with the government were complex, summarised by Fraser McHaffie thus:

“The railway companies said they would build the rail connection if the Treasury would appropriate the funds for improving the harbours. The Treasury said the money could be found if the Admiralty determined that Portpatrick and Donaghadee were the most suitable for the mail service and the Post Office adopt the route as the mail passage between Scotland and Ireland. The Post Office said it would send the mails via Portpatrick and pay a reasonable fee if private enterprise provided the actual steamboat connection”.

In July 1856 the Admiralty confirmed to the Treasury that it supported the Portpatrick to Donaghadee route, and on 15^th August 1856, the Treasury issued a “minute” releasing £15,000 to improve the harbour at Portpatrick and £10,000 for Donaghadee. With this assurance, the optimistically titled British and Irish Grand Junction Railway Company was formed, though by the time the line received parliamentary approval in August 1857, its name had become the Portpatrick Railway Company.

Railways built to Stranraer and Portpatrick. Stranraer Town station was connected to Dumfries in 1861; the branches to Stranraer Harbour and Portpatrick opened in 1862, and the line from Girvan and the north was completed in 1877.

The Portpatrick Railway Company

Construction of the line between Stranraer and Castle Douglas began in 1859. Controversially, the 68 mile line took a northerly route across largely empty moorland, avoiding population centres such as Kirkcudbright and Gatehouse of Fleet (Kirkcudbright was served by a branch line and Gatehouse of Fleet station was in the middle of the moors some six miles from the town), though the route did pass through Newton Stewart and Glenluce. It was single-track, with passing loops; there was enough space for it to become double-track if there was sufficient demand, but that never happened. The line was steam-powered throughout its 104-year life. Locals often complained that the timetables favoured the Irish boat trains (known as ‘Paddies’) over local services. In 1877, a branch line was built between Newton Stewart and Whithorn, and the company name became the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Railway. The railway was universally known as the “Port Road” – but to which port?

The contract for the Stranraer to Portpatrick section was not awarded until March 1860, a year after the rest of the line. This was due to ongoing uncertainty about the viability of the harbour at Portpatrick. Even the harbourmaster at Portpatrick, Edward Hawes, advocated using his port just for mails, passengers and light goods, with heavy goods going via Stranraer. The Portpatrick Railway Company hedged its bets by building a branch line to Stranraer harbour, where the town council was investing in upgrading the piers. The government dragged its feet about commencing work on Portpatrick harbour, and as we saw above, work had not begun when the Stranraer-Castle Douglas line opened in March 1861, though it was underway by the end of that month. The railway to Portpatrick was by now under construction.

Portpatrick Harbour and the Stranraer to Portpatrick Line

John Rennie’s design for Portpatrick harbour proposed two piers built out to sea, creating a horseshoe shaped harbour. The southern pier had been completed, with lighthouses at each end, but the northern pier was still a stump. The 1856 Admiralty plan added an inner basin, to provide extra shelter and accommodate larger steamships. Ominously, however, this basin was to be just an acre in extent, the largest area that could be managed given Portpatrick’s topography, but already small for the latest generation of steamships. Work focused on the basin rather than the northern pier, despite the latter being vital for safe entry and exit to the harbour in bad weather. The basin was completed and filled with water in July 1863. Work then continued to dredge the outer harbour to improve the depth of water, but winter gales caused further damage and progress was slow. The northern pier had not been completed. And the Post Office was losing interest in the short sea crossing. Most of the mail between England, Scotland and Ireland was now being directed through Holyhead and Dublin, while Burns’s steamers continued to carry mail from Glasgow to Belfast. In 1865, the Post Office concluded that there was “little want of this additional communication by Portpatrick and Donaghadee”. In 1866, work on the harbour was suspended.

John Rennie's design for Portpatrick harbour involved building two piers out to sea. The southern pier was completed by the 1830s but has since been largely destroyed by the sea. Its landward section can be seen to the right of the lighthouse. The northern pier was never completed; the stump in the sea on the right of this picture (above the lifeboat) is all that remains of it today. To the far right is the basin that was completed in 1863.

By contrast, work on the railway proceeded relatively smoothly, despite the hilly terrain. The line was seven and a quarter miles long and cost £70,000 to build. A 13-arch viaduct had to be built to cross the Piltanton Burn near Lochans, and a long, curving cutting was blasted through solid rock to bring the line along the coast from Dunskey Castle into Portpatrick, where it terminated at a station and goods yard at the top of the village. The village of Lochans did not warrant a station; instead a stop was established in open countryside mid-way between Stranraer and Portpatrick and named Colfin.

The line approached Portpatrick via Portree viaduct...

...before heading towards Dunskey Castle and the sea (the trackbed today bisects two caravan parks)...

...passing through a long, curving cutting...

...along which was a blowhole that tested train crews' resolve in bad weather...

...before emerging above the village.

As with all 19^th century railways, construction was done by gangs of navvies, many from Ireland. Some lodged in Portpatrick; in 1861 two families of Irish navvies, six people in all, were renting a single room in a house in Colonel Street. Accidents sometimes occurred. In November 1861, two youths were killed when scaffolding on Piltanton Viaduct collapsed, causing them to fall sixty feet into the burn, and in July 1862, two men were badly injured when blasting rock at Colfin station.

The railway was required to reach Portpatrick harbour. The original plan for this was a spectacular 350-yard tunnel descending at a gradient of 1 in 35 from the site of the town station, curving round nearly 360 degrees to emerge from the cliff side to the north of the harbour. A terminus, with passenger and goods facilities was to be built beside the new harbour basin. In the event, a much more modest design was adopted, with a branch line descending from the town station, crossing the main road at a bridge, and terminating by the harbour. The gradient was still 1 in 35, which would have felt rather like a ride on a roller coaster. A simple platform and sidings were built at the end of the line.

The original plan for the line included a spectacular 350 yard tunnel that would have emerged from the northern cliff face at this point, with a station and goods terminal next to the harbour.

The more modest final plan was for a branch line descending from the town station to the harbour. It crossed Main street at a bridge. The bridge was removed in 1902, but the abutments remain - and make a useful advertising hoarding.

The site of the harbour station has long been used as a bowling green, tennis courts and a playground.

The railway to Portpatrick and the harbour branch opened on Thursday 28^th August 1862. Celebrations were however muted, as the harbour was incomplete and its future had not been settled. As noted above, the Post Office was losing interest in the short sea route. In 1866, responsibility for harbours passed from the Admiralty to the Board of Trade, which made it clear that it saw no future for Portpatrick. In 1868, work on the harbour was formally stopped, and the Portpatrick Railway Company was offered financial compensation for their lost investment in the line to Portpatrick.

The Sirens of Donaghadee

So the town of Portpatrick was left with a white elephant in the form of an unwanted harbour basin, and the Portpatrick Railway Company was left with a line (and a name) that could not now fulfil its original purpose. Sailings were by now taking place between Stranraer and Ireland, and the regular service from Stranraer to Larne commenced in 1872. H.D. Thorne, historian of the Portpatrick Railway, observed that without the Government’s 1856 promise of support for Portpatrick harbour, the line from Stranraer would never have been built. In the event, Portpatrick fell into a state of economic depression and the Company was left with an unremunerative branch line.

There were, however, some optimists who were still under the spell of the short sea crossing to Donaghadee. In 1868, the pithily named Donaghadee and Portpatrick Short Sea Steam Packet Company Limited (try to say it quickly) was formed by Belfast businessmen with the backing of the Portpatrick Railway Company. A paddle steamer named Dolphin was purchased to provide a twice-a-day return service between Portpatrick and Donaghadee, linking with trains to Stranraer and Castle Kennedy. The Dolphin was 172 feet long, making it 22 feet larger than Portpatrick harbour had been designed for, and the largest ship ever to use the harbour.

The service commenced on Monday 13^th July 1868, seeking to attract through travellers and excursionists. In September, advertisements began to include the promise that “the train now comes alongside the steamer at Portpatrick”, implying that carriages made the somewhat hair-raising descent down the harbour branch line. This went in the reverse direction to the main line, meaning that carriages had to be shunted a few at a time at the town station and down the branch line, an operation that must have taken longer than transporting passengers by road. It is unclear how long (or if at all) this arrangement continued, but it was apparently the only time that passengers ever used the Portpatrick harbour branch.

The Dolphin could not pay its way, and the service was suspended before the end of the year. A couple of further attempts were made to utilise Portpatrick harbour for summer excursion traffic, in association with the railway company. In 1870 a steamer named Reliance made a few sailings in August and September, and in 1871 the Aber did likewise, before being rammed and sunk in fog (all passengers and crew were rescued). Then in summer 1874 the Avalon sailed for five weeks. By now however, the railway company had lost interest in supporting such ventures, and refused to offer cheap excursion deals. In September 1874 the harbour branch was formally closed down and the rails lifted for reuse as sidings at Newton Stewart. In 1889, the site of the harbour station was rented out as a bowling green and (later) tennis courts, which still exist, and in 1902 the bridge across the main road was taken down, though the stone abutments remain.

In 1877, the Girvan and Portpatrick Joint Railway Company completed its line from the north to Challoch Junction, near Dunragit, thereby providing a direct link from Glasgow to Stranraer and (potentially) Portpatrick. As will be seen, this link became important for excursion traffic.

The very last attempt to use the short sea route was in 1891, when the aptly named Terrible began a daily return service in July. It was plagued by mechanical problems, and sailed for the last time before the month was out.

The Branch Line and the Resort

And so the Stranraer to Portpatrick railway became a quiet branch line, one of hundreds lain across the country in the nineteenth century. At first there were just two or three trains per day each way, carrying both passengers and goods (unlike main lines, where passenger traffic was dominant, branch lines often carried more goods than passengers, which is why many stayed open for goods traffic after passenger trains were withdrawn). Trains took seventeen minutes to travel the seven miles from and to Stranraer Town station, including a stop at Colfin, which sometimes included collecting goods wagons. Stranraer Town station was the start and finish point for local services on the Port Road, while the 'Paddies' (boat trains) used Stranraer Harbour station. Portpatrick’s Free Church Minister, the Rev. Andrew Urquhart, wrote to the local paper to insist that trains did not disturb the Sabbath, but he needn’t have worried, as no trains travelled on any part of the Port Road on a Sunday until 1927. Trains on the branch line rarely exceeded a couple of carriages.

Staffing the line was similarly low key. In 1862, one James Kennedy, who had proved inadequate as station master at Newton Stewart, was banished to Colfin, where he earned 14 shillings per week. In the early 1900s, Colfin’s station master’s wage was 26 shillings per week, the lowest on the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Railway (the station master at Portpatrick earned 28 shillings).

The presence of the railway did however bring benefits to Portpatrick and the local area, which in turn boosted traffic on the line. By the early 1900s, it was reported that a “surprising amount” of goods traffic was being carried on the branch, mainly agricultural produce and livestock. In 1907, a Creamery was built beside Colfin station, and milk and dairy products were transported directly to Willesden in north London.

Colfin Creamery was built next to the line (the station was beyond the right-hand building). It is now a restaurant.

The railway also kickstarted Portpatrick’s future as a holiday and excursion resort. Leisure time was enhanced for all classes in the latter years of the nineteenth century by the growth of the railways, as they allowed for cheaper and quicker travel for all. Portpatrick began to become a resort at this time, promoting itself on its ‘bracing’ climate (bracing was a virtue in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Pleasure seekers arrived on the scheduled services, and also on occasional excursion trains. In 1900, C.L. Orr-Ewing became Laird of Dunskey, and actively sought to enhance Portpatrick’s attractiveness as a resort, building a new row of boarding houses on Blair Terrace. In the 1900s, Portpatrick acquired tennis courts and a golf course, and the formidable Portpatrick hotel overlooking the harbour. Lord Gordon (Laird Orr-Ewing’s father-in-law) publicly criticised the train service at the hotel’s opening ceremony, and shortly afterwards, the service was increased to six return trains per day (reduced to four in 1914) and the platform at Portpatrick station was extended to accommodate longer excursion trains.

In 1909, the Ferguslie Thread Mills of Paisley chose Portpatrick for its annual works outing, and some 2000 women and girls arrived in four special trains. They were well entertained, despite poor weather, but while waiting for the return home, an 18-year old girl named Rachel Douglas fell onto the track and was killed by a train. This tragic incident was commemorated by a motif of a pair of scissors carved into the edge of the platform. When the station closed and the platform was demolished, the stone with the scissors motif was rescued along with a short section of track, and still stands (though much worn down) in the grounds of Portpatrick school.

A pair of scissors was carved into a stone at the platform edge to commemorate Rachel Douglas, killed by a train in 1909. When the line closed, the stone was preserved and set up, with a short section of rail, in front of Portpatrick school, where it can still be seen, though the carving has worn away.

In 1923, the Portpatrick and Wigtownshire Railway Company became part of the mighty London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS). The LMS continued summer excursion trains from Glasgow, and the sight of these ten-coach, double-headed trains steaming over the village to the station must have been spectacular.

The End of the Line

In 1948, the railways were nationalised, and the newly formed Scottish Region of British Railways wasted little time in reviewing the network. Despite the benefits it afforded Portpatrick in terms of boosting it as a resort, the Stranraer to Portpatrick branch line had never been economic, and the growth of road traffic further reduced its value. On 6^th February 1950, the Portpatrick branch became the first line in Galloway to be closed to passengers (it was followed in September of that year by the branch from Newton Stewart to Whithorn). Goods trains continued to run to the Creamery at Colfin until 1959, when the whole line was lifted. The Piltanton viaduct was demolished, along with some of the line's bridges. The site of Portpatrick station became a caravan park, and later a housing estate.

These buildings on the site of Portpatrick station were apparently built after the line closed and the platform and station buildings removed.

The line from Dumfries to Stranraer continued until the 1963 Beeching review recommended its closure, along with the line from the north to Stranraer, which would have left Galloway without any remaining railways. In the event, the route to Stranraer from Glasgow was retained, but the ‘Port Road’ closed on 14^th June 1965, and Stranraer Town station a year later.

The short(ish) sea route to Ireland is still plied by regular ferry services, but now from Cairnryan rather than Stranraer. The railway however continues to terminate at the end of the pier at Stranraer harbour, the last legacy of the hopes and dreams of the promoters of the “British and Irish Grand Junction Railway”.

Sources Used

Cunningham R (2004) Portpatrick through the Ages. Dumfries: Alba Printers

Griffiths T & Morton G (eds) A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800-1900. Edinburgh University Press

McHaffie F (2001) Portpatrick to Donaghadee: The Original Short Sea Route. Stranraer & District Local History Trust

Swan A (2017) The Port Road. Lydney: Lightmoor Press

Thorne HD (2005) Rails to Portpatrick. Wigton: GC Books

Wolmar C 2007) Fire & Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain. London: Atlantic Books