A thatched cottage in Swanston village

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19753

Title

p. 56a, A thatched cottage in Swanston village

Description

A row of thatched cottages in Swanston village, Edinburgh. The doors to three cottages can be seen as well as small windows. The thatched roof is in need of some attention and has already been patched in places. One chimney stack can be seen. Flower beds surrounded by a fence and stones lie in front of the buildings.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1889

Size

11.2 x 15.2 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Thomas and Margaret Stevenson (Robert Louis Stevenson's parents) leased Swanston Cottage from 1867-1880. Stevenson would often visit them here and walk in the Pentland Hills. The village of Swanston grew up around Swanston Farm and originally consisted of ten thatched cottages. These included Swanston Cottage which was built in 1761. The thatched cottages were renovated in the 1960s and the site has further been developed to include a range of leisure facilities.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Architecture > Architectural features > Roofs

Homes > Residential buildings > Cottages

Places > Edinburgh areas > Fairmilehead

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

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