The New Robert Burns memorial cairn at Hillside by Montrose, Angus

Image: © Adrian Diack Taken: 16 Jul 2025

The photo shows the new Burns memorial cairn on the edge of a wooded car park and bordering a meadow on the Rosemount Estate at Hillside near Montrose. When Robert Burns and Willi Nicol left Laurencekirk on the 12th September 1787, they continued their journey toward Montrose for a planned meeting with Burns’s cousin, James Burness. However, before reaching Montrose, Burns stopped on the wayside of the old drove road in Rosemount, Hillside, in order to water his horse. One hundred and forty-three years later, four men saw the worth of creating a memorial to recognise and celebrate that event. The men behind the creation and siting of the original memorial to Burns’s visit to Hillside and the watering of the horse were Dr C J Shaw, the superintendent of nearby Sunnyside Royal Mental Hospital; Joseph Harris and Willi Herd, orderlies at Sunnyside; and Adam Christie, “The Gentle Shetlander”, who was a long-term patient of 50 years at the hospital and also the member of the group with the artistic talent to fashion the original plaque that was installed in the wall on Rosemount Road in 1930. Because of his artistic leanings and abilities, Christie was encouraged by the professional Montrose sculptor William Lamb, but Christie maintained his independence by declining the offer of sculpting tools, preferring to continue with old nails and a broken piece of glass. Adam Christie suffered from severe depression, and it, along with other mental illnesses, has undergone a revolution since his death in 1950. Sunnyside was founded in 1781 by the visionary philanthropist Mrs Susan Carnegie, and indeed it was the first mental hospital in Scotland. From its early days, it was not unusual for patients to have lengthy periods of care, even to the point where they became institutionalised. Adam Christie (1868-1950) was such a patient, and during the latter part of his time at Sunnyside, he was known by Rev. William Murray Diack, M.A., of Craig Church, as he was the long-term chaplain there, and also by doctors at that time, including Albert Lewis Hughes, MB ChB, and William Lindsay McDougall, the longstanding deputy. Over the years the wall on Rosemount Road, where the original memorial was installed, became unsafe, and while the wall was repaired with local stone, the memorial was removed on the 6th April 2023. This work and the creation of the new memorial were done under the auspices of the Montrose Burns Club, who raised the funds and made the arrangements for the building of the new memorial cairn in the nearby grounds of the Rosemount Estate. The concrete base for the new cairn was laid in April 2023, with continuing work carrying on into the spring and summer. The new monument was built from stone that became available from the closure of Sunnyside Hospital in 2011, and it gives a tangible link to the “four good men of Hillside” who instigated the original monument. The horseshoe shape of the new monument took inspiration from the act of watering Burns’s horse, and the sculpted head at the centrepiece was created from a piece of Shetland stone by Brian Wyllie of Pitmures in the style of Adam Christie. The opening ceremony of the new cairn was attended by a crowd of more than 50 people, including Lord Lieutenant Patricia Sawers, Provost Brian Boyd and Neil McNair, the president of the Robert Burns World Foundation. In addition to those dignitaries, Adam Christie’s great-nephew Peter Christie and his wife, Pat, travelled from Shetland to be present at the occasion. Montrose Royal Mental Hospital, also known as Sunnyside Royal Hospital, closed in 2011, and after the buildings were demolished and the site cleared, a new development took shape. With a nod to the past, new road names came into being that included Susan Carnegie Boulevard, Robert Burns Drive and Adam Christie Avenue.

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