Vans

This is a Norman name, derived from ‘vaux’ or ‘vaus’, meaning ‘valleys’ or ‘dales’. The family are said to have come to Scotland in the eleventh century as part of the entourage of Queen, later Saint, Margaret, wife of Malcolm III. They acquired the barony of Dirleton in East Lothian and built the magnificent castle which still dominates the village to this day. McGibbon and Ross, in their great work on the castles of Scotland, comment that the design of Dirleton Castle reflects a strong Norman and French influence. The castle was attacked during Edward I’s invasion of Scotland in 1297 and fell only after a long and bitter siege. A nephew of William de Vaus of Dirleton married the heiress to the lands of Barnbarroch in Wigtownshire around 1384. The estate of Dirleton passed into other hands and the principal family of this name was thereafter styled ‘of Barnbarroch’. In 1747, John Vans of Barnbarroch married Margaret, only child and heir of Robert Agnew of Shauchen, and in return for her  substantial inheritance he assumed the additional surname of Agnew. John Vans Agnew served in the second Boer War and commanded the Scottish Horse Yeomanry during the First World War. The house of Barnbarroch was redesigned and extended in the nineteenth century, and is particularly associated with the architect and landscape gardener, John Loudon, who described and illustrated his improvements in his treatise, Forming, Improving and Managing Country Houses. The house was gutted by fire in 1941 and still stands ruined and unoccupied today.