Lockerbie--Where Dinosaurs Strolled

Lockerbie, the Scottish town of 2,500 people where the Pan Am jet crashed and set houses ablaze, lies in a productive farming area and is celebrated among fossil hunters for footprints of dinosaurs.

The thriving community of red sandstone houses in southwest Scotland, 15 miles north of the English border, nestles in the middle of Annandale, the narrow valley of the Annan River.

The quarry near Lockerbie that supplies the town’s construction materials is the site where the dinosaur footprints have been found.

Lockerbie was a center for lamb and horse sales in the late 17th Century, and lamb sales have been held every year on Lamb Hill since 1680. The town manufactures cheese and cream and woolen goods and holds popular livestock fairs.

Its prosperity grew in the 19th Century when the railway arrived from Carlisle in northern England and moved northward to Scotland’s industrial center of Glasgow. The town had railway workshops until World War I.

Several of the landowners were connected with the Jardine Matheson Co., which made a fortune in the China tea trade and remains one of the major trading companies in Hong Kong.

Lockerbie, in the regional district of Dumfries and Galloway, was the scene of savage fighting between the Maxwell and Johnstone families for generations. The Maxwells held the lower end of Annandale and the Johnstones the center. In 1593, the Johnstones decisively defeated the Maxwells at Dryfe Sands, killing 700 of them, including their chief.

It was the Johnstones’ revenge against the Maxwells who had burned their Lockwood Tower--the ruins of which can still be seen--the previous year.

The Johnstones used to slash the faces of their Lockerbie enemies, a wound that became known as the Lockerbie Lick.

In one fight, a Johnstone lady, while pretending to surrender, smashed in the head of a Lord Maxwell with her castle key.