Old Aberdeen
Harled tenement 95-99 West Bow, Edinburgh built by Janet McMath (Widow of James Johnston, poultryman) in 1729 Until after the 1827 Improvement Act, West Bow was a steep Z-shaped street which climbed from the Grassmarket to Upper Bow at the foot of Castlehill. Most of the old buildings in West Bow were swept away to make room for the northern side of Victoria Street, built to link the Grassmarket with the new George IV Bridge. Before their demolition, Thomas Hamilton, the architect for the scheme, made careful elevational drawings of the buildings. As Hamilton's drawing shows, the first five houses at the lower end of the street on the West remain.
William Birnie Rhind RSA (1853–1933) was a Scottish sculptor. Rhind was born in Edinburgh as the eldest son of sculptor John Rhind (1828–1892), and the elder brother of J. Massey Rhind. The two brothers set up a studio in Glasgow in 1885, then Birnie moved to Edinburgh, and his brother went to Paris, then permanently to America in 1889, despite the warnings of their father. His younger brother was Thomas Duncan Rhind the architect. His name is particularly connected to several dozen fine sculptural war memorials in the Edinburgh and Lothian area. The best of these is the hauntingly calm monument to the Royal Scots Greys on Princes Street in Edinburgh. Also of poignant note is the 1919 bronze figure of a fallen officer, telling his men to "carry on", which acts as the school war memorial at Fettes College, a private school in Edinburgh. William is buried with his parents, and Alice Stone, his wife, in the family plot in Warriston Cemetery in North Edinburgh towards the south end of the original cemetery, facing a main path.
