Tea at Trianon: Gilmerton House

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Gilmerton House

From Country Life:

Gilmerton House, Lothian — the seat of Sir David Kinloch Bt — is a handsome 18th-century house that's been developed by the same family for the past four centuries. And it has an unexpectedly dramatic story to tell, as John Goodall explains; photographs by Paul Highnam for Country Life.

At 10am on Monday June 29, 1795, Sir Archibald Gordon Kinloch appeared in the dock of the High Court in Edinburgh, dressed entirely in black, to stand trial for the murder of his elder brother. The fatal incident had taken place nearly two months previously at the family seat of Gilmerton to the east of the city in the early hours of the morning. It enjoyed sufficient notoriety for the full court proceedings to be immediately published and the depositions made to the court offer a fascinating vignette of the life of the house and its owning family.

The history of Gilmerton House can be traced back to the 17th century, when, in 1655, an Edinburgh merchant and Lord Provost of the city, Francis Kinloch, purchased an estate in East Lothian incorporating the village of Athelstaneford. Joan Blaeu’s Atlas of Scotland (1654) marks ‘Gilmortoun’ nearby, implying the pre-existence of a substantial residence here and, when Francis was created a baronet of Nova Scotia by James II on September 16, 1686, he adopted it as his seat. The house has descended within his family to the present day.

Nothing is known of the form of this building before the mid 18th century, when it was completely recast. The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (1978 and 2024) attributes this work to the mason John Aitken and to the patronage of David Kinloch, the future 5th Baronet, in the 1750s. It’s not clear what the documentary basis for this assertion is but it’s plausible: David made an advantageous match in 1746 to Harriet Cockburn, a granddaughter of the Earl of Breadlalbane. The following year, his father died and David took control of the estate in place of his absentee elder brother James, 4th Baronet, who spent much of his life on the Continent and died in Switzerland in 1778. At that point, the baronetcy passed to David. (Read more.)