Coulter or Culter is a small village and civil parish

Civil parish

In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation and, where they are found, the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties...

 in South Lanarkshire

South Lanarkshire

South Lanarkshire is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, covering the southern part of the former county of Lanarkshire. It borders the south-east of the city of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs, commuter towns and smaller villages....

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. It lies approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Biggar

Biggar, South Lanarkshire

Biggar is a town and former burgh in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is situated in the Southern Uplands, near the River Clyde, around 30 miles from Edinburgh along the A702. The closest towns are Lanark and Peebles, and as such Biggar serves a wide rural area...

. Some old maps and local modern houses also have the spelling Cootyre - " a safe place for cows."

Nearby are two notable Scottish hills, Tinto

Tinto

Several places share the name Tinto:*Tinto is the name of a hill, the highest in the Tinto Hills in southern Scotland.*The Tinto River is a river in south-western Andalusia, Spain....

 and Culter Fell

Culter Fell

Culter Fell is a hill in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It is the highest point of a network of ridges that lie south of the village of Coulter, close to the town of Biggar in South Lanarkshire....

. The River Clyde

River Clyde

The River Clyde is a major river in Scotland. It is the ninth longest river in the United Kingdom, and the third longest in Scotland. Flowing through the major city of Glasgow, it was an important river for shipbuilding and trade in the British Empire....

 is also nearby. Coulter Village at Culter House is on the watershed between the Clyde and the Tweed.

The village has a mill which has since been converted to a restaurant.The second recorded \Mill some time about 1880. The site of the first since the burn, Culter Water, was diverted to its present course is unknown.

The village is the likely location of the fictional Midculter from Dorothy Dunnett's

Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett OBE was a Scottish historical novelist. She is best known for her six-part series about Francis Crawford of Lymond, The Lymond Chronicles, which she followed with the eight-part prequel The House of Niccolò...

 6 book series The Lymond Chronicles

Lymond Chronicles

The Lymond Chronicles is a series of six novels, written by Dorothy Dunnett, which were first published between 1961 and 1975. The series is set in mid-sixteenth century Europe and the Mediterranean and tells the story of a young Scottish nobleman, Francis Crawford of Lymond, from 1547 through...

. Within that series, Midculter is the home of the Crawford Barons of Culter and of the main protagonist, Francis Crawford of Lymond. A possible location for their castle, Midculter Castle, is Coulter Motte.

Coulter Motte lies some distance from the village on the side of the Clyde at Wolf Clyde, it is a small lump of ground adjacent to the river at a point where it is diverted by ditch toward the Tweed, to alleviate the flood water. Some enterprising person in the past had the idea of fully diverting the waters of the Clyde at this point toward the Tweed. It does not accommodate the descriptions in the Books of the Lymond Series of avenue of Trees, and surrounding hillsides- mention of the closeness to the major River do not appear.

The Monks of Kelso and the Templars feature in the early history of Culter, many place, and farm names would enforce the latters presence.

A More likely site of the Castle of Culter referred to fictionally in the books of Dorothy Dunnet would be Culter House ( circa 1680) later of course than the date of the series but nonetheless the oldest inhabited house in the upper ward of Lanarkshire, with its attendant mile long avenue of trees,extant on Roys Map of 1746/7, and mentioned in Buchan's "John Burnet of Barnes".

One famous son would be James Gillray (1757-1815), a memorial to whom rests in the Kirkyard.
Caricaturist - political stairist of the Georgian and Napolionic period.