Stately walk

Despite the rain, I got my 10k steps in walking round the local Stately Home, Newhailes House.

The house was originally built c.1686 on the Whitehill estate by Scottish architect James Smith for his own use. While studying to become a priest in Rome as a young man, Smith had been greatly inspired by the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Instead of becoming a priest, Smith became an architect. Despite being Scotland's ‘most experienced architect’ of the time, financial difficulties, an unsuccessful coal-mining venture forced Smith to sell the house just a decade or so later to the Bellendens of Broughton.

One of the later owners was Sir David Dalrymple, a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Sir David was a Scottish advocate and politician who sat in the Parliament of Scotland from 1698 to 1707 and in the British House of Commons from 1707 to 1721. He served as Lord Advocate, and eventually Auditor of the Exchequer in Scotland in 1720. They were to become a wealthy Edinburgh legal dynasty; it would also become the golden age of artistic and intellectual development in Scotland.
His older brother, John Dalrymple, 1st Earl of Stair, became one of the darkest figures in Scottish history when he organised and authorised the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe. Oh dear ...

I hope you have enjoyed today.