The earliest peoples of whom there is definite information were Celts, although there is some conjecture that there may have been a small, dark-haired peoples who have disappeared.

The Celts were hunters and had the name Selgovae (derived from the Gaelic for hunter ) and also known as Picts or painted people from the tattoos with which they adorned themselves. Their original dwellings would have been the caves and in time shelters constructed with stakes in the ground and covered by leafy branches. These progressed to wattle and daub - sticks and mud, and eventually more substantial buildings of hewn timbers, with gaps filled by clay and roofed with straw, ferns and turf.

A novel, although quite common feature in the region are the houses built on islands, often man- made by driving timbers into the bottom of a lake and backfilling. These "crannogs" had hidden, secret, paths to them which would zig-zag beneath the water so only those in the know could safely access them.

Elsewhere the land dwellers have left many traces of their passing with hill forts, hut circles and burial cairns. There is the earthwork called the Motte of Urr nearby and several other Urr features - Urr Water which flows to the sea from Loch Urr, Haugh of Urr and the Old Bridge of Urr. About 10 miles as the crow flies to the south west of Dalbeattie there is a small hamlet of Orroland.

A Roman geographer, Claudius Ptolemaeus of the second century placed a large settlement of Caerbantorigum, one of the four main towns of the Selgovae, in the vicinity of the Motte of Urr.

The Roman legions were active in the area in 79 AD and it appears that for three hundred years they occupied the valley of the Urr and probably used the site of the Motte as an encampment. Little is known of the inhabitants after the Romans left Britain in 407 AD and we must assume that there continued to be trade, movement and inter marriage with the Irish Picts just 21 miles across the sea.

About the seventh century there was an alliance with Angles from Northumbria and the Kings of Bernicia (the Lothians and Northumbria) who probably ruled the area although local government remained in the hands of local chieftains. It is this delegated rule that is thought to have given rise to the name of Galloway, being called by other Gaels Gallgaidhel or Gallwyddel - stranger Gaels.