Meikle Yett

Today's the day ........................ for a gateway

When the town of Kirkcudbright was besieged by the English under Sir Thomas Carleton in 1547, the town's defences consisted principally on the east, of a broad marshy creek extending south from the harbour to the Meikle Yett.  The 'Meikle Yett' or 'Big Gate'  was one of two entrances into the High Street of the town, the other being the 'Watergate'.  

After the Pentland Rising in 1666, the Meikle Yett was adorned with the severed heads of prominent local covenanters as a warning to the general public.  But by the late 1700s, the fortified gate was no longer needed and it had fallen into disrepair.  A petition was presented to the Town Council by some of the townsfolk saying that if it was removed, it might encourage people to build some decent houses at the east end of the town - and the Meikle Yett was duly removed in 1771.  

Some of the stones of the gateway were incorporated into other buildings but the arch and the stone globes which stood above the pillars were removed to the present entrance of St Cuthbert's Churchyard - as you can see above.  The only evidence of where the Meikle Yett once stood are two pivot stones, 6 ft apart in the tarmac of the High Street ........................