Old Travel Blog Photograph Drumtochty Church Glenalmond Perthshire Scotland

Old travel Blog photograph of Drumtochty Church and graveyard in Harrietfield, Glenalmond located eight miles West of Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. John Watson, whose widely familiar pen name is Ian Maclaren, was born in 1850 in Manningtree, Essex, England, where his father, who was engaged in the Excise. The formative years of his childhood were spent however in Scotland, first at Perth and then at Stirling. In due time young Watson went to the University of Edinburgh, where he excelled in the classics and in philosophy. He became secretary and afterwards president of the Philosophical Society connected with the University. When he had completed his studies he decided to enter the Free Church of Scotland, and passed through the curriculum of the New College. He also spent some time at Tübingen. Robert Louis Stevenson was a classmate of his in the English Literature class in the University; and Dr. Watson remembers the occasional visits Stevenson made to the class. For a short period, about a year, after his ordination, he served as assistant pastor to Dr. J. H. Wilson of the Barclay Church in Edinburgh, before he became minister of the Free Church in Harrietfield, a small village consisting chiefly of one main street, belonging to the estate of Logiealmond in Perthshire. His gifts as a brilliant preacher could not be hid under a bushel; and two and a half years were all that he was permitted to spend at Logiealmond. Calls multiplied, and became insistent, until he ultimately accepted one from St. Matthew’s in Glasgow. Dr. Watson’s literary plans of early years, when his young, alert mind was casting around for material to fasten upon for future developments, had been laid aside, and treated as dreams of a presumptuous youth. Up to 1894 he was quite unknown to the public as an author; and yet, in little more than a year after the publication of his first volume, Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, the sales had exceeded in England and America 200,000 copies. Doctor Watson continued his literary activity up to the time of his death, which took place on May 6th, 1907.



All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

View the most recent Tour Scotland photographs.