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 in the pubs. The State Management Scheme persisted for many years after the First World War was long over and the munitions factories dismantled. It was not until the early 1970s, when the low prices and unadulterated beer in the Gretna area began to become conspicuous, that the government enterprise was sold off by the Heath government. Gretna is in Dumfries and Galloway, in the south of Scotland, on the A74(M) near the border to England, and near the mouth of the River Esk. The township is distinct from the smaller nearby village of Gretna Green, famous for marriages, which