Sciennes House Place: Braid Place Cemetery

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Sciennes House Place , Edinburgh EH9 1NWBraid Place Cemetery

Braid Place cemetery was the first communal Jewish cemetery in Edinburgh. This cemetery was consecrated in 1820. Twenty-nine separate stones can be found in this cemetery. On the companion website you can find out more about one stone and the history it can reveal: Moses Ezekiel. Across the street is the house of the moral philosopher, Professor Adam Ferguson, one of that renowned group of literati of Edinburgh’s ‘Golden Age’, of the Scottish Enlightenment, where in 1786 the only meeting between Sir Walter Scott and Rabbie Burns took place. In that era, the house was so remote from the city centre that his house was called Kamchatka, the name of a village in north-eastern Siberia. Even 34 years later, when the Braid Place Jewish cemetery was consecrated, the area was considered remote.

Gravestone of Moses Ezekiel

Gravestone of Moses Ezekiel

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Statue of David Hume

 Scottish Enlightenment  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Statue of David HumeThe Royal Mile, Edinburgh EH1 1RN

David Hume (1711–76), incongruously portrayed in this statue as an ancient Greek philosopher rather than a mid-eighteenth-century man of letters, is perhaps the best known figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the eighteenth century Edinburgh witnessed an unprecedented flowering of science, literature and philosophy. Hume was a contemporary of Adam Smith (1723–90), the great political economist, Adam Ferguson (1721–1816), the social theorist, Joseph Black (1727–99), the pioneering chemist and James Hutton (1726–97), the geologist. These figures all knew each other and socialised together in the convivial atmosphere of Edinburgh’s many clubs and hostelries. Together they helped develop many of the ideas and theories that made the modern world.

Portrait of David Hume (1711–1776) by Allan Ramsay.

Portrait of David Hume (1711–1776) by Allan Ramsay.

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Adam Ferguson’s House (Sciennes Hill House)

 Scottish Enlightenment  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Adam Ferguson's House.3 Sciennes House Place, Edinburgh EH9 1NN

Adam Ferguson was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and, as the author of the Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), is often considered one of the founders of sociology. He regularly entertained many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment at his house in Sciennes. In Ferguson’s day the house was on the very edge of the city and, because of its remoteness, his friends jokingly referred to it as ‘Kamchatka’ after the peninsula in Siberia. In the winter of 1786/7 he hosted a dinner here at which the two most famous Scottish writers of the period, Robert Burns and the young Walter Scott, met for the first and only time.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

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National Records of Scotland – Adam Ferguson (1723-1816)