Peffermill House from the garden

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 17 Feb 2011

The house has several claims to fame. Sir Walter Scott wrote much of 'The Heart Of Midlothian' in Duddingston Manse across the neighbouring loch and is believed to have based the laird of Dumbiedykes' house in the novel on Peffermill. Another uncertain story is that it was the residence of Thomas Braidwood, who became famous for his pioneering work with deaf children, and that it was here that James Boswell and Dr. Johnson met him after their tour of the Hebrides (though the school stood further north in the area that became known - non-pejoratively - as 'Dumbiedykes', from the walled-in lane along which the children passed to reach it). Another piece of local folklore is the story of Maggie Dickson, a Musselburgh fishwife, hanged in the Grassmarket in 1728 for concealing a pregnancy and disposing of the corpse when the child died shortly after birth. Her relatives were on their way home, having collected her body, when they stopped off at Peffermill to refresh themselves. On returning to the cart, they discovered a resurrected Maggie banging on the coffin lid. Under Scots Law, being legally dead, she could not be re-hanged and became known thenceforth as 'Half-hangit Maggie'. http://www.the-grassmarket.com/history/maggie-dickson.html "There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in Edinburgh, which no other city has to show; a College of the Deaf and Dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to practise arithmetic, by a gentleman named Braidwood. It was pleasing to see one of the most desperate of human calamities capable of so much help..." -- Samuel Johnson after his visit in 1773 Image

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