Tongland Bridges ©Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright

Today's the day ........................ to archive

After he found the interesting old postcard of the Telford Bridge at Tongland, Will asked the Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright whether they had any more old photographs of the area.  They looked them out and today we went to have a look at them.

The quality is not good - because it's a picture of a photograph - but this is looking downstream this time.  You can see the old railway viaduct looking somewhat precarious, balanced on its rather spindly legs, with the Telford road bridge beyond it.  The shore on the left of the picture seems quite sandy - and although it's pretty hard to make it out, there's actually some steps down to it with people walking.  The fact that there's a rowing boat tied up is also quite significant.

Nowadays, the river looks quite different here.  The Tongland Hydro Power Station was built just upstream in the 1930s and the River Dee no longer slowly meanders seawards at its own pace.  The daily release of water into the river by the power station has meant that the river bed has been stripped of its sediment and is now down to the bare rock. 

It must have been a completely different place back around 1900 when this picture was taken .......................