My family history in the South West of Scotland goes back ten generations - at least - and is deeply entwined with the troubled events of the late 17th Century - the Covenanters and the dark period known as The Killing Times. Researching my forebear John Milroy, one of the Lads of Kirkcalla - three men connected to the story of the Solway Martyrs - has taken me on an emotional journey through time, visiting & documenting locations and stories; and meeting other descendants. John, along with two other men, William Johnson and George Walker, shares a grave in Wigtown churchyard with Margaret Wilson and Margaret MacLaughlin, the Solway Martyrs, two women who were tied to wooden stakes and drowned in the Bladnoch River on May 11th 1685 for their refusal to swear the Oath of Abjuration. The three men were hanged later the same year, for the same reason. The images and writing are collected together in The Killing Time, a body of photographs and words set for publication and exhibition in June 2025. The photographs, lyrical and dark, document land and sea, river and woodland; the very sources of the Martyrs stories. Places these folk lived, worked, sought refuge - and ultimately died, for their beliefs. So many others died too. The making of this work has at times been deeply affecting; things that happened are seeped into the land and water and have not gone away; the stories are there, and need to be told.

Iain Stewart, May 2025