THE STORY BEHIND…
Family photos gathering dust tell the remarkable story of The Lindsays of Balcarres
Ludovic Lindsay had always known about a cabinet filled with old photo albums and other boxes in his late grandfather’s home of Balcarres – the family seat in the East Neuk of Fife – but it was only on a wet afternoon about five years ago, that he thought, “right, I’m going to take a look inside”. What he found was a real treasure trove of photos, dating from the 1840s onwards – at the very beginning of photography – including three early daguerreotypes, which have since been verified as being some of the earliest of these types of photos in the world.
Ludovic originally planned to create a coffee-table book for the family, but it soon became obvious that what he had stumbled upon was worthy of something far greater.
Some of the photos and diaries Ludovic unearthed hadn’t been looked at for 70 or 80 years and, together with other items he sourced, from cousins scattered throughout the UK that he had never met before, he began to build a detailed picture of the family from the 1840s onwards.
Ludovic says: “Basically you had this Scottish aristocratic family, who had sided with the Stuarts for too long and by the end of the 18th century, they were on their uppers.
“Balcarres was just a run-down tower then, but one of the family married someone who was left land in Lancashire, which was over some of the richest coal seams in the country.
“By borrowing money from here and there and a little bit of money from other endeavours, they invested, they bought up little pockets of land, joined it together and created one of the largest coal and iron companies in the country. In fact, it was the largest joint stock company in the country after the railways,” he says.
Among the many ancestors whose stories interested Ludovic was the 26th Earl of
Crawford, who with his father built up the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, one of the greatest private libraries. The 26th Earl became president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878 and a decade later, he gifted many scientific books and astronomical instruments to help found the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, which replaced the Edinburgh Royal Observatory.
It’s this 26th Earl who features on the cover of Ludovic’s new book about the family, The Lindsays of Balcarres, wearing the robes in his role of Hereditary Standard Bearer, Great Steward and Premier Earl of Scotland.
Many women also feature in the book, including Lady Margaret Majendie (née Lindsay), a great poet, who counted Queen Victoria among her fans, and Lady Cynthia Anne, who married an Italian called Fummi and had to escape the Nazis with her children.
The story of Ludovic’s own great grandfather, David, 27th Earl of Crawford, could fill a book alone. He ran the Crawford Committee, which laid the groundwork for the BBC, and during the First World War he was the only cabinet peer who signed up. David only returned from the war because he was offered the role of Minister of Agriculture at a time when Britain risked starvation.
This pictorial book is crammed with chapters on themes as diverse as electricity and yachts, as well as profiles on dozens of Ludovic’s ancestors. £60, Pimpernel Press. pimpernelpress.com