IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Meadowbank Road, KIRKNEWTON, EH27 8BS

Kirknewton has expanded, not surprising considering the communications links. Street cleaning in the east of the village

The B7030 and NCN75 share this quieter road west from Edinburgh, a more peaceful alternative to the A71 Calder Road.

View from Main Street on Sustrans route 75.

The site of an old church, but no sign of it now, two burial enclosures, and several 18 Century gravestones

The mausoleum is on the site of the choir of the old kirk, and commemorates the celebrated physician, botanist and philosopher William Cullen (1710-1790), and his son Robert, Lord Cullen, eminent judge, elegant scholar and accomplished gentleman, who were of the Cullen family of Ormiston. See http://www.cullenproject.ac.uk/william-cullen/

This is the old burial ground, and the site of the original kirk of Kirknewton.

There was a church on this site, but no obvious sign of it now, only two burial enclosures, this one from 1864, of the Cullens

The inscription above the entrance to the enclosure notes that it was erected in 1864 as a memorial to William by the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and his great granddaughter Marion Fenella Marjoribanks. He was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in 1710, and died at Kirknewton in 1790. After an ‘apprenticeship’ in Glasgow, service as a ship's surgeon, and a period as assistant to an apothecary in London, he practised medicine from 1732 in various places in Scotland and in 1747 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry in Glasgow, and in 1751 to the Chair of Medicine. In 1755 he moved to Edinburgh and held the Chair until 1766. He then became Professor of the Institutes of Medicine (Physiology) and of the Practice of Medicine until his resignation in 1789. So he did not have much of a retirement. He was a man of great personal charm, a lively personality, very articulate, and with a rich imagination, so was a good lecturer. His contributions to medicine and his widely used textbooks earned him an international reputation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1777 [Information from a biography by W.P.Doyle on the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry website]. Robert, Lord, Cullen, possibly a son [1742-1810], was, according to his plaque, ‘an eminent judge, elegant scholar, and accomplished gentleman’.

....JOHN SMITH SON TO JOHN SMITH WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE APRILE THE 17 DAY 1735 [or is it 1733?] AGE 10 YEARS. One of several 18 Century gravestones in Kirknewton grave yard. The reverse shows a hammer and horseshoe Image, implying that that was his trade, but would that be the case for a 10 year old?

The other side of John Smith's gravestone Image in Kirknewton graveyard.