Gretna Green the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests", culminating with Richard Rennison, who performed 5,147 ceremonies. The local blacksmith and his anvil became lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Two in particular, The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's Shop (1710) became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage trade. The Old Blacksmith's Shop opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as 1887. Victorian chronicler Robert Smith Surtees described Gretna Green at length in his 1848 "New Monthly Magazine" serial, "The Richest Commoner in
Gretna, Dumfries and Galloway notice of an impending marriage to the community. As a result, many elopers fled England, and the first Scottish village they reached was often Gretna. With the construction of a new highway, Gretna Green became easier to reach, and Gretna's appeal as an elopement destination waned. The village was notable for HM Factory, Gretna, codenamed "Moorside", a huge cordite munitions factory built nearby on the shore of Solway Firth to supply ammunition to British forces during World War I. The factory, the biggest munitions factory ever built, stretched for from Eastriggs along the Solway coast as far as Longtown in