Newhailes House & Gardens

Connections at the heart of Enlightenment Scotland

Lord Hailes was the third Dalrymple to own Newhailes, the first being his grandfather, also Sir David, who bought it in 1709, and the second being his father, Sir James Dalrymple. Both grandfather and father were prominent in legal and political circles, and both made substantial changes at Newhailes, including extending the house, transforming the interior, and landscaping the estate.

In addition to having the good fortune to inherit a grander version of Newhailes, Lord Hailes was lucky to follow the family path into law and public life during Edinburgh’s ‘hotbed of genius’ years. His profession, social connections and intellectual enthusiasm put him at the centre of Enlightenment Edinburgh. You’ll come across his name in multiple contexts in histories of this time – from hosting James Boswell and Samuel Johnson to being involved in the ‘A list’ clubs of the day to sitting on the committee that reviewed James Craig’s designs for the New Town.

His regular participation in Scotland’s intellectual and social societies included being a founding member of the Select Society, a debating society that has been described as ‘a who’s who of Edinburgh’s Enlightenment’, and its offshoot, the Edinburgh Society. He also belonged to the lesser-known Society of Ballad Makers, went to the balls and dancing assemblies of the day, and found time to write and translate numerous works on history, law and antiquities. Samuel Johnson described his best-known work, The Annals of Scotland, as ’a new mode of history which tells all that is wanted . . . without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty [sic] of conjecture’.

A seat at the legal high tables

All of this activity was on top of a day job as an advocate, later as a Court of Session judge and then Lord of Justiciary. Here, too, Lord Hailes was often at the centre of events that still hold historical headlines, such as presiding over the trial of the burglar, Deacon Brodie, in Edinburgh.

He was also one of the Court of Session judges who, in the case of Joseph Knight v John Wedderburn, ruled that since slavery was not recognised in Scotland, Joseph Knight should win his freedom from ‘perpetual servitude’ after being brought here as a slave from Jamaica. A plaque commemorating this case was erected at Edinburgh’s Court of Session in 2022.

A lending library for the great and the good

We know that much of Lord Hailes’ socialising with the ‘who’s who’ of the Enlightenment took place in the dining and drawing rooms of Edinburgh rather than at Newhailes; however, the house does have its own place in the geography of the Scottish Enlightenment. It was here that the Dalrymples kept their vast library of over 7,000 books, manuscripts, atlases, maps and other works, from which we know that David Hume and other key Enlightenment figures regularly borrowed.

The collection was started by Hailes’ grandfather, Sir David Dalrymple, who added a new wing to Newhailes to house it, almost doubling its size; Lord Hailes then expanded it, including with his own numerous publications. Much of the collection, along with the family archives and papers, is now held in the National Library of Scotland (NLS), which describes it as the ’most important contemporary collection to survive from the period of the Scottish Enlightenment’.

As well as accessing these collections at the NLS, you can see the library for yourself on a tour of Newhailes. It’s a spectacular room – big enough for Miss Christian Dalrymple, Lord Hailes’ daughter, to host a ball there for over 170 guests – and it still has a grand desk where Lord Hailes did much of his writing. It’s one of the very first libraries anywhere to have adjustable-height shelves, and the bibliophile Sir David had it built over a vaulted cellar to allow air to circulate, thereby protecting his prized books from damp.

Illuminating the Enlightenment

Newhailes also provides other glimpses into the Scottish Enlightenment and the lives and stories of the Dalrymple family, including notable relatives such as the 1st Earl of Stair, now remembered for his role in the Glencoe Massacre, and Viscount Stair, who wrote the foundations of modern Scots law. Portraits in the dining room, by Allan Ramsay and others, bring these lawyers, politicians and soldiers out of the history books, showing them as people whose faces (though not hairstyles) might not look out of place in a law court today.

You’ll also see the bedrooms that these various Dalrymples slept in, the furniture they used, the ornaments they collected, the fashionable interiors and landscapes they commissioned, and how they lived their lives over the generations. It’s an entry point into the world of Enlightenment Scotland that’s easier to start with than many of the philosophical, religious and political debates of the time.