Ten things you didn't know about... Dumfriesshire

The great Victorian engineer, Thomas Telford, designer of canals and suspension bridges, was born in Eskdale, in the valley of the Esk, in east Dumfriesshire.

Stranraer FC was the last senior football club in Britain to have floodlights installed—in 1982. The Dumfriesshire team plays at Stair Park on the London Road, at the southern end of the public park.

The last witchcraft trial in Scotland took place in Dumfries and Galloway in 1701, when Elsbeth Rule was branded and banished forever. Dumfriesshire also hosted Scotland's last public executions—Robert Smith in 1868 and Mary Timney in 1862.

Once one of only two spa towns in Scotland, Moffat still boasts Scotland's shortest street (Chapel Street) and narrowest street (Syme Street), as well as Britain's narrowest hotel, The Star.

Scotland's highest village is Wanlockhead, at 1,409 feet, home also to Britain's highest post office.

Dumfries' Theatre Royal, built in 1792, is Dumfriesshire's, and Scotland's, oldest working theatre. Recently overhauled and re-roofed, it was saved from demolition in 1959 by an amateur dramatic group, The Guild of Players.

The first turnip seeds in Scotland were a gift for banker and inventor Patrick Millar, of Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire, from King Gustav of Sweden—hence the name swedes, short for Swedish turnips.

Britain's first steam-powered boat, designed by William Symington, sailed on Dalswinton Loch in 1788, making its way across the water at 5 mph. The poet Robert Burns, a local Dumfriesshire resident at the time, was said to be a passenger on the boat's one and only journey.

Traditionally in England and Scotland, a couple over the age of 16 could declare themselves husband and wife without parental permission, but in 1745 an Act of Parliament banned such marriages in England. Gretna Green was the first changing post across the border in Dumfriesshire on the main London-to-Edinburgh stagecoach route... and the rest is history.