Sara Maitland

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"There is a lot of talk about “urban regeneration” (including some real success stories) but very little about the regeneration of small rural communities – there are success stories there, too. I want to look at one of them.

Once upon a time there was a royal burgh and county town in the south west of Scotland called Wigtown. Like many towns in southern Scotland, it has a wide high street, and unlike most, a magnificent, almost swaggering, red sandstone county hall. Along the middle of the high street, there is a pretty little public garden and a bowling green.

It has a population of about 1,000 (rather smaller than it was in 1755!) and is located “in the middle of nowhere”, although an exceptionally lovely nowhere, green and sweet and surrounded by the sea. It is more than 50 miles from Wigtown to any town at all with more than 10,000 people.