The builder and destroyer

BORN into a prominent family of several generations of Burgesses in Musselburgh, William Aitchison (1753 – 1839) was a baker at 4 Chapel Street in Edinburgh on his marriage in 1772. He married Jane Mylne the oldest daughter of James Mylne and Marion née Rennie (oldest sister of John Rennie) of Lochhill in Aberlady.

At the end of the 1700s (my gg grandfather George was born at St Clement Wells in 1791) William was in a position to rescue his brother-in-law George Mylne, from the failing St Clement Wells Distillery and turn it around so that by 1801 he was able to purchase Queensberry House. But William was a pragmatist and had no qualms about removing and selling all the valuable fixtures and fittings before selling the property back to the Government as a barracks. Even without the money from the sale of the panels and fireplaces William made a cool 169% profit on his original outlay of just £1,170 after owning the property for only 2 years.

St Clement Wells continued to prosper and was known to return £5k to the Inland Revenue in taxes in just one year. In 1805 William purchased Bordland from Lord Andrew Hamilton for £7,350 and in 1808 purchased Drummore, built by Lord Drummore son of Sir Hugh Dalrymple, and surrounding estates of 500 acres including the whole of Wallyford and the foreshore around the estate. He later sold the shore but with the proviso that he retained the rights to any beached whales. Drummore was a magnificent Queen Anne building of red and yellow stone overlooking the Forth. Before William died in 1839 he probably added the ugly grey stone extension to house his extensive family and dependent Mylne relatives.

William and his sons wrote extensively to John Rennie whose papers reside in the National Library in Edinburgh. These show that as a result of George Mylne’s debts on his death in 1814 John Rennie (nephew) and William Aitchison (Brother-in-Law) were responsible for the financial wellbeing of several Mylne offspring.

William left an incredible legacy in a prosperous family of close knit sons and one daughter. William and James continued to run the distillery until it was closed in 1822. On the death of his father William Jnr became the owner of Drummore; James became a landowner at Fisherrow; Francis inherited Borland; John was knighted for his 60 years of service to the Army – The Marquis of Hartford was one of his executors; George was a ship owner whose ships traversed the globe as well as providing a regular service between Leith and London, he was also an Admiral of the Forth and a Director of the Queensberry House Hospital; Robert became an Admiral and baby David excelled as an Archdeacon. Not a bad legacy for a baker and his wife.

Helen Mound