At 7:30 each morning, May possibly acts dinner in the stately dining room, their surfaces lavish with red velvet flocking. Candlelight romanticizes significant gilt-framed portraits of yesteryear lords Hillhouse - all dressed in the clan's exclusive blue tartan - and their elegant ladies.

Magdalene Home is big enough to function a few events of ancestor seekers, however little enough to be comfortable for all guests anxious to participate Might on her behalf everyday treks. Mornings at nine sharp, sated by way of a hearty British morning meal, visitors struggle into May's section truck for an excursion through villages and pastures dotted with destroyed castles and systems noticing historical group and family sites.

Genealogy is taken really here. Citizens of ancestral farmhouses and systems through the entire region can read their clan lineage by heart. Spacious church documents validate their accuracy. May possibly has learned the real history of every group and freely recites facts, results, and lore. She claims that my Bells are among the absolute most visible of the Edges families, with their shield of three bells however to be viewed etched on gravestones and above numerous doorways through the area.

Our Bell place experience begins the moment May hustles us in to her car for a quick travel to Dumfries, the royal burgh and professional headquarters of Dumfriesshire where, in 1306, Robert the Bruce slew Red Comyn and stated herself Master of Scotland. This is the final home of poet Robert Burns. He died in Burns off Home in 1796 and is hidden in the family mausoleum in St. Michael's churchyard only across the road.

Nowadays, Burns up House is a museum offering a picture about Burns' life, portraits of his family unit members, and original copies of his writings penned in his hand. Following perusing its relics, we consider more record at the Old Connection Home memorial on the Stream Nith. Right throughout the water could be the community of Maxwell Community, built famous by the music focused to one of Burns' enjoys, Annie Laurie.

Later, from large in just a renovated windmill, the Burgh Museum, we see the red sandstone buildings and substantial expanses of parkland that comprise the city of Dumfries. Small has transformed since my ancestors made their way through these booming, slim streets by base or cart, aside from a massive Safeway market that anchors the key buying mall on the edge of town.

Traveling yet again, we glimpse frequent ruined towers and thick woods once we motor eastward. Beyond Lockerbie, May abandons the current speedway for straight back streets that meander through tiny settlements at Nithsdale and Annandale to an old church owning the community of Middlebie.

The raincoats and shoes we loaded hesitantly prove their value once we slog through large grass handmade with raindrops to check the cemetery heavy with Bell gravestones. Despite erosion and cracking, the etchings of three bells are distinct on each. The cold, steady water slackens to a drizzle as we push to two Bell domiciles dating to the 14th century. An immediate see of the prosperous horse farm at Bankshill is plugged by way of a large knoll; the following house is secluded beyond a narrow lane and a loose cedar connection spanning a strong gorge and waterfall.

Our camera presses slowly and I easily fill the pages of my laptop as May possibly chauffeurs us on the lovely hills and dales, when substantial battlefields where my ancestors struggled to protect their lands from different cycling clans and the English. Once we drive, May recounts reports of local plot, nothing more stirring than that of good Helen Irving of Kirkconnel, whose short life was bitterly entwined with my Bell line. The child of an early 16th century regional land baron, Helen was hailed while the loveliest woman in Scotland. When her parents offered her give to handsome, wealthy Richard Bell, heir to Blacket Home, everybody else reported it a great match.

Helen, however, had a key love, Adam Fleming. Aided by a knowledge servant, the sweethearts achieved privately before the fateful evening when Bell materialized from the shadows showing a crossbow. At the moment he aimed, Helen threw himself between both men. tellthebell.com survey

As Helen lay dying, Fleming chased his competitor to the banks of the River Kirtle and pierced him with a sword. Fleming fled to France, but may perhaps not ignore Helen's ghostly cry. Heartbroken, he returned to die draped across her grave and was hidden beside her. The tragic occasion was later recounted in a poem by Friend Walter Scott.