The land had been in the Wright family since 1680 and James Wright inherited it in 1745 whilst still a minor. Educated in Edinburgh he married Jacobina Drummond and they moved into the renovated house at Loss in 1753. He was farming his own land, gaining income from tenant farmers around him and with his other business interests he became very wealthy, eventually buying Argyll’s Lodging in Stirling now a Historic Scotland property.
He was meticulous in his record keeping of business & social transactions and kept a book of ‘good ideas’. He was what was known as an ‘improver’ in the days when agriculture was going through a revolution so he embraced new methods of cultivation & husbandry that improved both yield and his profits. His main drive was to change the emphasis from subsistence farming to large scale sheep production as was the style throughout much of Scotland at the time. He also enclosed parcels of land for more intense cultivation of crops and planted lines of trees to create a parkland site. Some of these remain near to the Lossburn reservoir which was built around 1897 as the demand for water increased to meet the needs of industry in the Forth valley.
The remains of his house here are minimal as James Wright left in 1764 for a grander residence but it was still a substantial farmhouse for many years until it fell into disrepair in the mid c19th. See if you can work out the layout of the house from the evidence on the ground then view the image on the cache site that is an extract from the book ‘Well sheltered & watered’.
This cache is one of a set of caches exploring the rich heritage of the Glen. Each cache can be visited independently but there are two good walks that take in parts of the set. This cache is on both walks.
A high level walk of 13 km takes in the hills surrounding the glen and is a substantial venture requiring some good navigation on pathless hills above the 500m line. It covers 7 caches of the set. The caches are:-
GC23M4D – Calcite Puzzle
GC23B65 – Well Sheltered and Watered
GC23KEM – Battlewatch
GC23MED – Making a Loss
GC23M50 – Hanging On
GC23M52 – James Wright of Loss
GC23M4R – Quarterside
Purists may want to add the cache on the summit of Dumyat - Lost Look GCVX01 - placed by Team Incredible to complete the high level traverse.
A lower level walk of 9 km covering 5 caches is on good tracks all the way but still climbs to a height of 300m in places. The caches are:-
GC23M4D – Calcite Puzzle
GC23M4M – Little Jerah
GC23M50 – Hanging On
GC23M52 – James Wright of Loss
GC23M4R – Quarterside
To continue the walk take the track going west then turn to cross the Loss burn and up the sleeper laid track which then turns south east to follow the hillside round below Dumyat and eventually drop down to the final cache.
NB: If you wish to visit the Dumyat cache then ascend the open hillside from the top of the cobbled path.
Well done Craigleaquestors on First to Find.
All the caches are now in place for both walks.