The proprietor of the Buccleuch Hotel was John Connell, owner and operator of the Langholm distillery. Although he died in 1876, his executors still held the hotel in 1915.

The keepers were James and Christina Connon, both from Stirlingshire. James is second from left in the photo below, taken when Lodge Eskdale Kilwinning No. 107 won the Dumfriesshire Masonic Bowling Tournament.

According to a local tradition, part of the hotel used to be part of an Armstrong tower.

James’s son Alexander enlisted in the KOSB on 4th March 1914, five months before the war began, at age 16. He served in the 1st/5th Battalion until December 1917 when he was appointed as a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. He served with 144 Squadron in the Middle East, a bomber unit, and was then an instructor there until May 1919.

The Buccleuch Hotel was closed in May 1921, together with the Commercial Hotel, as the result of a local poll under the Temperance (Scotland) Act 1913, which provided for restrictions on the sale of alcohol. James moved to Dumfries and ran the Queensbury Hotel.