Scotland on Sunday

Patrick Geddes

While many of us could name Robert Adam as the 18th-century architect behind some of the elegantly proportioned avenues and crescents of Edinburgh's New Town, how many people know the name Patrick Geddes? Geddes was a man of many talents, among them botanist, sociologist, philosopher, developer and town planner, and his legacy to Edinburgh, and indeed the whole world, is to be commemorated in a specially commissioned stained glass memorial panel to be unveiled at the capital's new council headquarters later this month. Born in Ballater in 1854, Geddes arrived in Edinburgh in 1884, after studying in London and starting his professional career as a biologist in France. It was the height of Edinburgh's renaissance and anyone who was anyone had moved into the Georgian New Town, leaving the Old Town behind to those unfortunate enough to have to stay there. Geddes realised that gradually, this ancient part of the city was being run into the ground, and wanted to stop it happening. According to architect Ben Tindall, chairman of the Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust and responsible for Edinburgh's Hub building, "he wanted to breathe life back into the Old Town".