Duddingston - History

History

Duddingston Loch has been used for ice-skating and curling, even boasting a Curling House, for several centuries. In the 17th and 18th century the village was primarily a centre for the coal and salt mining industry, but was also known for its weaving industry, in particular for a cloth known as Duddingston Hardings.

Bonnie Prince Charlie held a council of war in a house in the village, shortly before the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745. In the same year, James Hamilton, 8th Earl of Abercorn purchased the Duddingston Estate from the Duke of Argyll. Lord Abercorn commissioned the architect Sir William Chambers to design Duddingston House in the Palladian style, and this was completed by 1768.

The loch provided the setting for Henry Raeburn's painting of The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, painted in the 1790s, as well as the less famous but very atmospheric painting by Charles Lees called Skaters on Duddingston Loch by Moonlight.

Dr. James Tytler (1745–1804), author, balloonist and encyclopedist, lived in Duddingston. Robert Burns knew him, describing him as a mortal who wandered the precincts of Edinburgh in leaky shoes, a sky-lighted hat and unlikely breeches, who yet was responsible for at least three quarters of Elliot's Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1774 he was living on the Holyrood Abbey "sanctuary lands" to avoid his creditors. After his wife left him and their children in 1775, he was known thereafter to be co-habiting with at least one, if not two women, one of them a Duddingston washerwoman. This circumstance eventually led to his flight from Scottish justice for the crime of bigamy in 1788, when he left Duddingston, and both women, to remove himself to Berwick. Whilst living in Duddingston he did build a printing press, and turned out further copies of the encyclopedia, and other more successful publications, but he was a poor businessman and never seemed to benefit from these and other successes. Sadly, even his attempt at ballooning in 1784 was something of a debacle. He was finally able to rise to a height of 105 feet, and descend again, which qualified him as Britain's first balloonist, but his success at the time was overshadowed by other more popular balloonists.