Closeburn Hall is a plain but very commodious mansion, and its vicinity has been the scene of more improvements of the useful kind, than that of any other mansion in the south of Scotland. The extent of surface that, from useless bog heath or other sterile soil, has been turned into good pasture, irrigated, rendered arable, or planted with trees, during the last forty years, is astonishing. During this time, limeworks have been established on a highly improved principle, and the practice of liming both arable and grass land rendered general throughout the country. Saw mills have been erected, and the pines and firs planted by Mr. Menteath sawn up into boards, laths, and for other purposes, and sold in this manufactured state at very moderate rates; thus at once creating a market for the article, and tempting the farmers and owners of cottages to increase their comforts. Mr. Meriteath has formed many miles of excellent roads, some of them on the principle of alternate levels and inclined planes, with stone wheel-tracks on these planes, by which he has found that one horse can draw from thirty cwt. to two tons in small four-wheeled waggons (Ency. of Agr., 2d edit. ﾺ 3540-1.) He uses extensively bone manure; and, as an Englishman, has of course practised his country's method of making hay: but, though he has done this for nearly half a century, his neighbours still continue the old practice of withering it in the field. (Vol. VII. p. 534.) Schools have been established by Mr. and Miss Menteath; and, in short, there is no good work that can be expected from a resident landed proprietor of great intelligence and the most active benevolence, that has not been engaged in (and that, too, with success) by this family. [Editor's Note: Closeburn Hall was abandoned before 1900 and used for target practice during the Second World War]
