The Duke's predominantly upland estates of Ettrick Forest, Teviotdalehead, Eskdale, and Liddesdale formed by far the largest part of the South Country estate. Comprising tens of thousands of acres of the central Southern Uplands massif, stretching over southern Roxburghshire, southwest Selkirkshire, and north-east Dumfriesshire, as an estate report of 1767 summarised, this was ‘a country of great extent, but from its soil and climate not suited for much artificial improvement in the way of agriculture’. ‘Its chief purpose’, the report continued, was for sheep breeding, ‘and whatever plan of improvement may be thought of, this grand purpose should ever be kept in view, and the means to be used made subservient to that end’.

Commercial sheep farming had been introduced to the Southern Uplands from the eleventh century onwards by the Border abbeys of Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso, and by the end of the sixteenth century large-scale sheep farming had become established throughout the region. Two surveys carried out by the Buccleuch estates – the first dating from the 1680s, the second from 1718 – provide a general picture of the size and stocking levels of the sheep farms on the estate around the turn of the eighteenth century. Two main types of holding emerge: in the lower reaches of the valleys, where more low-lying land was available, farm sizes tended to be small, generally under 200 acres; further up the valleys, where the land narrowed and farms consisted mainly of hill ground, farms tended to be much larger, between 500 and 1,000 acres, while the practice of tenants holding more than one farm meant that the average ‘working units’ of the hill farms were quite often in excess of 1,000 acres. Following the same pattern, those farms further down the dales where more arable land was available tended to hold smaller numbers of sheep, whereas largest flocks were held in the highest districts. In 1681 45% of the upland farms consisted of flocks greater than 500 sheep, with 13% holding over 1,000; two years later a further survey showed 57% of farms with over 500 sheep, with just under 18% carrying more than 1,000.