Rectangular courtyard steading at Cumrue Farm, near Templand

Cumrue Farm, near Templand, is a Category C listed complex comprising an early 19th century farmhouse and a rectangular courtyard steading, believed to date to around 1827, though the complex may incorporate or reuse earlier farm buildings likely from the 18th century. The farm is shown on Roy's Military Survey of 1752–55, and by the 19th century it was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, whose architect Walter Newall designed a number of farm steadings on the estate during an extensive improvement programme begun after 1822. There is no direct evidence that Newall designed Cumrue, but elements of its design may reflect his influence. The steading was built in 1827 by contractor C. Halliday, according to a Register of Entailed Estates held at the National Records of Scotland.

THE FARMHOUSE

The farmhouse is a two-storey, three-bay symmetrical building, built to the front (south) of an earlier house of similar form, doubling its depth. The front part was most likely added at the same time the steading was constructed. The building is constructed in rubble stone, painted throughout, with contrasting smooth painted window and door margins. The south elevation has painted ashlar corner margins. The openings in the north elevation are irregular. At each rear corner there is a single-storey outshot with a monopitch slate roof. Windows are predominantly plate glass in timber sash and case frames. The roofs are covered in grey slates with straight stone skews. Wallhead chimney stacks are present: those to the south (front) part of the house are ashlar and coped, while those to the earlier rear portion appear to have been rebuilt and are rendered. At the centre of the front elevation is a late 20th century single-storey porch with a piended slate roof.

The interior was inspected in 2018. The entrance hall features a shallow arch with scrolled consoles. The ground floor southwest room has a basket-arched buffet niche in its north wall, and its walls carry a mural of hunting scenes signed by Karl Ruckgauer of Mainz and dated 1946. Most rooms retain plain moulded cornicing and panelled timber window shutters. The doors are predominantly four or six-panel timber with moulded architraves.

The hunting mural is of social and historical interest. Ruckgauer was a German prisoner of war held at the former Kirkmichael House (now the Barony, part of the Agricultural College), nearby. The people portrayed in the hunting scene are understood to be local individuals, including a previous owner of Cumrue Farm. The level of artistic quality can be described as naïve art, characteristic of works produced by prisoners of war, who commonly created artworks — ranging from music to carvings, paintings and even buildings — as gifts or in exchange for good treatment. The date of 1946 is not unusual, as repatriation of prisoners of war took time, and some chose to remain in Scotland. Little else is known about Ruckgauer or whether he produced other work in Scotland or in Mainz.

THE STEADING

To the rear (north) of the farmhouse is a farm steading comprising a series of rectangular-plan barns, byres and sheds arranged around an open courtyard. The steading buildings are rubble-built with tooled stone around the openings and have slate roofs. There are a variety of 20th century additions and alterations, all of which are excluded from the listing under Section 1(4A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997, as are all separate ancillary buildings. The interior of the steading is plain with no historic agricultural fixtures and fittings remaining, although some long feeding troughs survive in the north range.

At the southwest corner of the steading is a cartshed with a barn above, built in 1827 by C. Halliday. The south elevation presents eight arcaded segmental arched openings, with the leftmost (westernmost) being a narrower arch fitted with a later door, behind which are stairs to the upper floor. The cart bays are formed with stone columns and arches — a design typical of southeast Scotland — and the tooled stonework of the arches gives the building particular design quality. The cartshed appears to be largely unaltered. With seven working cartshed openings (the eighth being the stair access), the scale of the building indicates that Cumrue was a very large farm, since one bay corresponded roughly to 20–32 hectares of arable farmland. Cart sheds were a late 18th century innovation that spread across Scotland by the 1820s and 1830s, built to protect carts — which had replaced packhorses and sledges as the primary means of transporting goods to local markets — from the weather, often with granaries above.

At the northeast corner of the steading is a circular horsemill. It retains its timber beam roof structure and central timber shaft, though no machinery was present when inspected in 2018. The conical roof structure is supported on timber beams radiating from a central post. Horsemills of this type were used to power threshing machines — invented by Andrew Meikle in East Linton in 1787 — by tethering four to six horses to the ends of long beams and walking them in a circular path to turn the central axis. By the 1850s most horsemills were rapidly converted to steam power, and only a handful survived, mostly on smaller farms or crofts. In Dumfries and Galloway there are around 30 other listed examples surviving as part of a steading complex; their survival is now rare across Scotland, and most no longer retain their machinery.

PLAN FORM AND SETTING

The layout of the farm — steading buildings arranged around an open courtyard with a detached farmhouse facing south and turned away from the working buildings — is characteristic of the improvement period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, reflecting both functional efficiency and the social status of the farmer. The footprint of the farm buildings is first shown in detail on McCallum and Dundas's Plan of 1854, on which the circular horsemill is depicted. A variety of additions have since been built to the west, north and east of the steading, but the 19th century courtyard layout can still be read on the ground. With the exception of the porch addition, the footprint of the farmhouse itself remains largely unchanged from that shown on the 1854 plan and subsequent Ordnance Survey maps.

Cumrue Farm stands on raised ground and is a prominent feature in the landscape. Large agricultural sheds have been built to the north and west, but these have not adversely affected the setting of the listed buildings to the extent that the 19th century layout can no longer be understood, and the relationship between the farmhouse and the steading remains clear. To the northwest of the farm is a very long row of farm labourers' cottages built for Cumrue Farm, described as one of the longest rows of farm labourers' cottages in Scotland, reflecting the scale of the farm in the 19th century. These cottages are not listed and were not assessed as part of the 2018 listing review.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The late 18th and early 19th century was a period of profound agricultural improvement across Scotland, during which subsistence farming gave way to larger enclosed farms using drainage, lime fertilisation and improved husbandry. The southwest of Scotland was a particularly productive agricultural area, dominated by the need to supply southern markets with store cattle, while oats were grown as the principal subsistence crop. Cumrue Farm lies in Kirkmichael parish, which, because of its relative flatness and dryness, was one of the best grain-growing parishes in the region. The New Statistical Account of 1845 records that at that time the greatest gross output in the parish comprised 1,350 acres of oats and 1,650 cattle grazed. The General View of the Agriculture of the County of Dumfries (1812) noted the need for good farmhouses with suitable steadings to attract incoming tenant farmers. Surviving farms from this period are consequently an important part of the area's agricultural heritage.

The statutory address was changed and the category of listing revised from B to C in 2019. The building was previously listed as 'Cumrue Farmhouse and Former Cartshed/Barn'.