Rowanburn is a hamlet in Eskdale

Eskdale, Dumfries and Galloway

Eskdale is a glen in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The River Esk flows through Eskdale to its estuary at the Solway Firth....

, Dumfriesshire

Dumfriesshire

Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries is a registration county of Scotland. The lieutenancy area of Dumfries has similar boundaries.Until 1975 it was a county. Its county town was Dumfries...

, in southern Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, near Canonbie, and about 5 miles south-east of Langholm

Langholm

Langholm , also known colloquially as the "Muckle Toon", is a burgh in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, on the River Esk and the A7 road.- History:...

. It is administered by Dumfries and Galloway

Dumfries and Galloway

Dumfries and Galloway is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. It was one of the nine administrative 'regions' of mainland Scotland created in 1975 by the Local Government etc. Act 1973...

 Council.

Rowanburn was founded as a coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 community in the late 19th century to house miners from the Canonbie coalfield. The coal mines are now closed. To the south is the Riddings Viaduct, a nine-span railway viaduct built in 1864 for the Border Union Railway

Border Union Railway

The Border Union Railway was a railway line in south of Scotland. It was authorised on 21 July 1859 and advertised as the Waverley Route by the promoters - the North British Railway...

.

The only village shop, and garden centre, closed in 2003.

Several farms in the area were devastated by the 2001 foot and mouth crisis

2001 UK foot and mouth crisis

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. This epizootic saw 2,000 cases of the disease in farms in most of the British countryside. Over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed in an eventually successful attempt to...

 which spread rapidly via the local livestock market at Longtown

Longtown, Cumbria

Longtown is a small town in northern Cumbria, England, with a population of around 3,000. It is in the parish of Arthuret and on the River Esk, not far from the Anglo-Scottish border. Nearby was the Battle of Arfderydd....

.