Вигтаун: История шотландского городка и национального книжного центра.

Wigtown ('/w//ɪ//g//t//ən//,// // //t//aʊ//n/ (both used locally); Baile na h Ùige) is a town and former royal burgh in Wigtownshire, of which it is the county town, within the Dumfries and Galloway region in Scotland. It lies east of Stranraer and south of Newton Stewart. It is known as "Scotland's National Book Town" with a high concentration of second hand book shops and an annual book festival. Wigtown is part of the Machars peninsula.

W. F. H. Nicolaisen offered two explanations for the place name Wigtown. One theory was that it meant 'dwelling place', from the Old English 'wic ton'; however, if it is the same as Wigton in Cumbria, which was 'Wiggeton' in 1162 and 'Wigeton' in 1262, it may be 'Wigca's farm'. Other sources have suggested a Norse root with 'Vik' meaning 'bay', giving the origin as a translation of 'The town on the bay'.

The surrounding area (the Machars peninsula) is rich in prehistoric remains, most notably the Torhousekie Standing Stones, a Neolithic stone circle set on a raised platform of smaller stones. It consists of nineteen boulders up to 5 feet high aligned to the winter solstice, surrounding a ring cairn on which there are 3 large stones (flankers), two upright and one recumbent. On a low ridge across the road from the circle there are another three stones.

Andrew Symson, a 17th century minister, suggested the first settlement would have stood on low lying sands between the present day Wigtown and Creetown. Wigtown had two ports (gates) which may have been closed at night to form a large cattle enclosure. These were East Port, opposite a site later occupied by the British Linen Bank, and the West Port, which stood opposite the mouth of the High Vennel. Blackfriars, the Dominican friary, was founded at "Friarland" north of the mouth of the Bladnoch, south east of the town of Wigtown, by Devorgilla in around 1267. Wigtown Castle was in existence by 1291, on flat land down by the River Bladnoch, (outlines clearly seen on an aerial view), whilst the town and church were on a hill, "an inversion of the usual arrangements". Nothing remains of the castle, although a strong natural site and indication of a large enclosed and defended area seems to point to a castle of the Edwardian type (Edward I) dating from the end of the 13th century. The site of the castle was excavated after a fashion about 1830, by a Captain Robert M’Kerlie and a team of volunteers. The outlines of a building were clearly traced on that occasion and a ditch, which had been broad, was distinctly seen on the north where there was also a semi circular ridge of considerable elevation said to be the remains of the castle's outer wall. A few years later, a reporter in the New Statistical Account wrote that a fosse was quite discernible, although "the foundations of the walls cannot now be traced". Mortar and "other remains indicative of an ancient building" were still to be observed. The town developed as port and became a royal burgh in 1292. The royal burgh was granted to Sir Malcolm Fleming by David II in 1341. In 1372 Wigtown was purchased by Archibald the Grim Lord of Galloway. When he later became Earl of Douglas in 1384, it became attached to that earldom. It was restored to its former tenure as a royal burgh as a result of the forfeiture of the Douglases in 1455. Its status was formally recognised be a royal charter in 1457.

An early reference to a tolbooth in Wigtown occurs in the late 16th century, and it is possible that this structure was blown up by gunpowder to make way for the new town hall which was completed in 1756. This municipal building in its turn gave way to the Wigtown County Buildings which were erected in 1862. Wigtown removed its first mercat cross in the late 17th century. A second market cross was erected in the main street in 1818. Andrew Symson, a 17th century minister of the church at Kirkinner, left a description of Wigtown. Writing in 1684, he described Wigtown as having "a market for horses and young phillies which the borderers come and buy in great numbers." Residents of Wigtown and the surrounding area earned their livings in a variety of ways. An 18th century observer, Samuel Robinson commented that from its peculiar position in relation to the sea, the county of Wigtown offered many singular advantages to the landing of smuggled goods and smugglers were not slow in taking advantage of this: however after a barracks was built "the trade and those who conducted it were ruined". Robinson, describing Wigtown, also noted that "the greatest number of houses were of a homely character, thatched and one storey high". The Newton Stewart to Whithorn branch railway line had a station at Wigtown which opened in 1877.

Wigtown was described by William Learmonth in 1920 as the quaintest county town in Scotland. RAF Wigtown was constructed on the outskirts of the town and opened in 1941. Under the control of 29 Group RAF, the Station was home to No. 1 Air Observers School, later No. 1 Advanced Flying Unit (Observer), as well as providing a short term home to several operational RAF squadrons. The Station was closed in 1948. Today it is very occasionally used by light aircraft, sometimes being referred to as Baldoon Airfield. In the 1990s Wigtown became Scotland's "book town". However, in contrast to Hay on Wye, Wigtown's status as a book town was planned, in order to regenerate a very depressed town (the main employers, the creamery and distillery, having closed in the 1990s), although the distillery (Bladnoch) has now re opened and is distilling its own malt whisky. There was a national search in Scotland for a candidate town. The Wigtown Book Festival was first held in 1999 and grew to be the second largest book festival in Scotland. There are currently around a dozen bookshops in the town.

Wigtown Primary School is based in New Road in Wigtown.

Wigtown Parish Church was designed in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1858. Sacred Heart Catholic Church was designed in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1879 to a design by the Edinburgh architect John George Garden Brown. Wigtown Quaker Meeting House is as at Chapel Court, South Main Street. Wigtown Baptist Church is in Southfield Lane.

Wigtown lies less than 1 mile (2 km) from Bladnoch, a village with a distillery producing malt whisky of the same name. The River Bladnoch can be fished for Atlantic salmon and has historically been well known as one of Scotland's finest rivers producing spring fish. It meets the River Cree in Wigtown Bay, meandering through a large area of salt marsh which has been designated as a Local Nature Reserve (LNR). Wigtown Bay is the largest LNR in Britain, and is home to a wealth of wildlife, particularly birds. Some people come to admire them from the comfort of the viewing hides situated near the harbour, others, wildfowlers, come to harvest some of the plentiful ducks and geese attracted by the extensive conservation work carried out by the Wigtown Wildfowling Club. The first pair of ospreys to return to Galloway in over 100 years arrived in 2004. A live camera link to their nest was created and can be viewed in the Wigtown County Buildings. To the east of Wigtown is The Martyrs' Stake, a monument marking the traditional site where the Wigtown Martyrs were drowned in the 17th century. Their graves are in the Parish Church cemetery. There is a small cell in the County Buildings in which they were imprisoned prior to their execution. This cell is all that remains of a much older building which was largely destroyed to make way for the County Buildings (built in 1862).

Jessica A. Fox's Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets (2013) is her account of following her dream and moving from Los Angeles and a job at NASA to help run a bookshop in Wigtown and finding love. Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller, published 2017, and Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) detail his experiences as the owner of The Bookshop, Scotland's largest second hand bookshop. Kathleen Hart's Devorgilla Days, published in 2021 is a memoir of life in Scotland's book town, it is a celebration of the community who helped heal her, including the thousands of followers on Instagram where she is known as Poshpedlar. The BBC reported on 2 October 2018 that options on Fox's book and Bythell's first book had been bought by "a Hollywood film company" with the idea of combining them to create a movie. In the Harry Potter universe, the Wigtown Wanderers quidditch team come from the town.