Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce, the last Laird of Urie, was known as the Great Pedestrian. He was most famous for walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 successive hours. He started his march on 1 June 1809 and walked one mile every hour for 42 days in an amazing test of stamina and sleep denial. The half mile (880 yards) course on Newmarket Heath was carefully marked out and lit at night by lanterns, and thousands of spectators watched Barclay walk back and forth. The Captain won 1,000 guineas for his athletic achievement, but hundreds of side bets earned him well over 30,000 pounds ? a sum equal to about three million pounds today.
Robert Adamson (Scottish, 1821 - 1848)
Robert Adamson was one of the first professional photographers, setting up in business in Edinburgh in March 1843. He had aspired to be an engineer but his health was too poor. His brother, John, who was involved in the early experiments with photography in St Andrews, taught him the calotype process. Shortly after opening his studio on Calton Hill, Robert met the painter David Octavius Hill. They worked together for a few weeks on studies for a grand painting of the Free Church of Scotland before entering into partnership to explore the possibilities of photography. Despite Adamson's early death, the two produced some of the most impressive works taken in the medium and greatly influenced later practice in the art.
David Octavius Hill (Scottish, 1802 - 1870)
A painter and a lithographer by training, David Octavius Hill is best remembered for the beauty of the calotypes he and Robert Adamson produced together. Hill was a sociable and kind-hearted man who did much to support the arts in Scotland and between 1830 and 1836 he was the unpaid Secretary of the newly established Royal Scottish Academy. After Adamson's death, Hill's attempt to start a new partnership with the photographer Alexander MacGlashan around 1860 failed. Hill is to this day revered as one of the first in the trade who transformed photography into an art form.
