The 15th of July is the birthday of William Henry Playfair (15 July 1790 – 19 March 1857) architect of the National Monument, City Observatory, and John Playfair and Dugald Stewart Monuments, all of them on the hill, as well as Regent, Carlton and Royal Terraces, surrounding it, also other notable Edinburgh buildings such as the Royal Scottish Academy, the National Gallery of Scotland, and the Royal College of Surgeons.
We are planning a Playfair Walk, starting at 19.00 on 15 July from the Portuguese Cannon on the top of the hill, and finishing up with a small-scale celebration. The walk will be led by local historian Hetty Lancaster. This is our first time to organise this kind of event and we are limiting it to 15 participants, so please contact <chair@caltonhilltrust.org> if you are interested in coming. It will be free for members, non-members will be asked to make a donation — or join the Trust.
Some more information:
“Playfair was one of the greatest exponents of the Picturesque which was the dominant aesthetic of Georgian England. You do not have to read very far in Playfair’s letters to realise he was absolutely steeped in it. In Scotland the battleground of the Picturesque had been Calton Hill, in which struggle both master and pupil had fought valiantly on behalf of the Picturesque to prevent the natural beauty of the hill being spoiled. Stark and Playfair were prototype landscape architects both in their desire that buildings should never spoil existing natural beauties and in their belief that when you built, the building must be blended into its setting with trees and plants”. Ian Gow (William Henry Playfair in Scottish Pioneers of the Greek Revival, The Scottish Georgian Society 1984)
Ian Gow’s 1984 article on Playfair in Scottish Pioneers of the Greek Revival is now digitised here.