Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 18 on 8/1/2005.

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In the footsteps of Scott

John Hannavy picks sites linked to the great Scottish poet and novelist, Sir Walter Scott

The Chatelaine of Abbotsford, Miss Jean Maxwell-Scott, took a few minutes to decide which key from the massive keyring would open the elaborate cabinet, but eventually she retrieved the 160 year old Visitor’s Book. Opening it on the page for October 24th 1844, there was the signature I had been looking for – William Henry Fox Talbot, one of four people to visit the house that afternoon.

Fox Talbot was the father of modern photography. He invented the idea of the negative from which multiple prints could be made, and he was also responsible for the world’s first photographically illustrated publications.

His visit was one of the highlights of a photographic journey to Scotland, during which he visited and photographed many of the places associated with the life and work of Sir Walter Scott. Scott is also my inspiration – as he has been for generations of writers and photographers – so this new series of mine, travelling through Scotland in the footsteps of Scott, is merely bringing up to date a tradition as old as
photography itself.

Talbot’s pictures were used in his 1845 publication Sun Pictures in Scotland. Some of mine will be used in my forthcoming book Great Photographic Journeys.

Abbotsford has been photographed regularly ever since Talbot’s day, and great Scottish photographers such as James Valentine of Dundee, and George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen, published extensive series of views of the place in the 1860s and 1870s.

Visitors in those days could not only b.....

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By John Hannavy

Section : Scottish Castles

Page number : 18