The Mineralogical Magazine , March 1944 states:

Alluvial gold is said to have been first discovered in the Leadhills-Wanlockhead district in the reign of James IV of Scotland, 1488-1513, and there are records of its being worked between 1511 and 1513, the subsequent operations affording a fascinating chapter in the history of British mining. Both Shortcleuch and its tributary the Windgate Burn were the scene of operations by Sir Bevis Bulmer between the years 1578 and 1592 and again in 1603, arid the present specimen was found in one of the small patches of ground which had apparently escaped the attention of successive generations of gold seekers.

The gold of the Leadhills-Wanlockhead district occurs in alluvial clay, gravels, and silt bordering the streams, forming terraces, and filling depressions on the lower slopes of the hills which are formed of Ordovician slates and grits. As typical of the occurrence, a terrace of small extent worked by John D. Weir in 1936 on the west side of the Windgate Burn at its junction with the Dun Grain Burn afforded 12 to 15 inches of gold-bearing silt resting upon slaty rock, and overlain by about 5 feet of gravel with occasional large boulders. Accompanying the gold are nodules of limonite up to one inch or more in size, the only other heavy minerals met with being pellets of cerussite and pyromorphite derived from the disintegration of neighbouring lead veins. Practically every bucket full of the silt yielded a minute grain or two of gold. The gold here is as a whole coarse, though as the method of recovery employed is a crude arrangement of launders with riffles and grating~ it fails to collect any fine or float gold.