Pentoot and Gap’s Mill

The following account was extracted from an article by John Corrie in the ‘The Transactions and Journal of Proceedings of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, Session 1890 – 1891’.  ‘My grandfather, while returning one night between eleven and twelve o’clock from a visit he had been paying his son, was startled to see a figure in white come out of the Gap’s Mill loaning, and mount the dyke by the roadside. Noiselessly gliding along the top of the fence, it continued to keep pace with him until the Pentoot well was reached, when it mysteriously disappeared. My grandfather was not superstitions, yet this particular encounter he never could altogether explain away. It may be mentioned that the Gap’s Mill and Pentoot pens referred to in the narrative were both of evil reputation as having been the scenes of child murder, and I can remember how as a boy “each particular hair stood o’ end ” as occasion took me near the haunted spots.’

Twenty years later, in ‘Witchcraft and Superstitious Record in the South-Western District of Scotland’, J Maxwell Wood expands says that ‘at Pentoot and Gaps Mill ‘pens’ a crying child (supposed to have been murdered) is heard.’

I do not know where in Glancairn Penttot or Gap’s Mill pens can be found, but will update the map when I do.  As it stands the map shows a location in Glancairn.