Swanston Village
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson's parents, Thomas and Margaret (neé Balfour) leased Swanston Cottage for a dozen years or so, for the period of their only son's late 'teens and twenties (1867 until 1880).
The present village and small thatched single storey cottages was restored by the City Council in 1964. Above Swanston Village across the golf course, there is a small wood known as the “T” Wood. This was planted in the late eighteenth century by the then laird of Mortonhall as a memorial to a member of the house who fell in battle.
Robert Louis Stevenson tells a quaint story in his “Edinburgh Picturesque Notes”, about a distiller of whisky who had his distillery at Bowbridge, which was in a north easterly direction from Swanston, down the hill beyond the Fairmilehead. He and the Exciseman, who was appointed to assess and levy duty on Distiller’s whisky stocks, were reputed to have been good friends and each time the Exciseman went to inspect the distiller’s stocks he used to start playing the tune “Over the hills and far away” on his whistle a short distance away, to warn the distiller of his arrival, thus enabling his friend to have time enough to load his excess stock onto his horse drawn cart and whisk it away to a secret hiding spot in the hills. In the meantime the distiller’s wife would greet the Exciseman with a hint of surprise at his arrival and invite him in to the house. The Distiller would slip in through a back door after having hidden his stock. After the Exciseman had inspected his friend’s modest stock of whisky and all the necessary papers had been signed, they would together enjoy a liberal but lawful dram and the sumptuous meal prepared by the Distiller’s wife. Thereafter the Exciseman would set off on his long walk back to Edinburgh, well fortified with ‘one for the road’, and the Distiller would go and retrieve his hidden cargo! A ‘lawful dram’ can still be enjoyed today at one of many pubs dotted around Swanston, of which one is the Fairmilehead Inn – steeped in fascinating history!