The Inch was acquired by the Gilmours in 1660, the same year in
which they bought Craigmillar; and by the marriage in the last
century of the daughter of Sir Alexander Gilmour with William Little
of Liberton, these adjoining properties were eventually united,
and now belong to the representative of both families, Mr. Gordon
Gilmour of the Grenadier Guards. An addition was made to the house
at the beginning of this century, when several carved and lettered
stones were inserted in the walls, which had formed part of the town
house of the Little family in Liberton Wynd. It had been pulled
down to make way for George IV. Bridge. At the north-east corner of
the park, at the place still called the Bridgend, there formerly
stood a little hunting-chapel, built by James V. in 1502. It has
completely disappeared. In the Inch itself are some interesting
sporting pictures, brought here by the late Mr. Little Gilmour. He
died in 1887, the last survivor of the old Melton set, but from the
dining-room walls still look down the portraits of "Vingt-un," and
other celebrities of the palmy days of Leicestershire.
WALK III.
Cameron Toll--Prestonfield--Peffer
Mill--Craigmillar--Edmonstone--Niddrie--Duddingston--St.
Leonards.
He walketh, he walketh, pedestrious soul!
By the Porto called Bello, and the Cameron Toll.
These lines were written long ago, by old Mr. Lloyd, on one of his
visits to his son-in-law at Niddrie, and described the direction of
his daily walks. They will apply equally well to us to-day, for we
leave Edinburgh by what used to be the Cameron Toll; and, letting the
main road pursue its way south to Dalkeith,--to be rejoined by us
later on,--we turn to the left and skirt The Cameron. This place is
being rapidly built over, but it is still possible to trace the lines
of the _crooked-nosed_ promontory, which here stretched into the
long-vanished lake, and from which the estate acquired its name.
A little farther east we see Prestonfield standing on the
gently-rising ground between us and Arthur Seat. Originally known
as Priestfield, and granted by James IV. in 1510 to Walter Chapman,
the first Edinburgh printer, it very soon after passed into that
branch of the Hamilton family that were ancestors of the Earls of
Haddington. Sir Alexander Hamilton of Priestfield, brother to the
first earl, sold the property to his neighbour, Sir Robert Murray of
Cameron. A few years later, in 1679, both places were brought by Sir
James Dick, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who joined to them additional
lands acquired from the Prestons of Craigmillar. He changed the name
of the whole property to Prestonfield, and built the present house in
1687; the former one having been burnt down by the students of the
College of Edinburgh, in an antipapist riot a few years before. The
present owner of Prestonfield, Sir Robert Dick Cunyngham, is a direct
descendant of Sir James Dick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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