Projects

[1041] Royal Wedding Party

This selection of photos depicts a street party, one of many around the UK that were held on April 29th 2011 to celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Cairns Aitken, the photographer and contributor of the project, was an academic physician/psychiatrist in Rehabilitation Medicine, becoming Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and retiring as Vice-Principal at the University of Edinburgh in 1994. He was born in Dunoon, Argyll in 1933. He has had a life-long interest in photography, and in completing projects. He lives in a nearby street, and attended to photograph some of those at the party. He was awarded the CBE in 1998 for his contribution to the Health Services.

Keywords: Royal, Queen, wedding, party, William, Kate Middleton

Location of Project Material: Central Scotland

[1039] Photographs from Botswana

This selection of photos depicts various wild animals (including giraffes, lions, wildebeest and zebras) as well as birds (storks, vultures) in their native habitat in sub-Saharan Africa. Cairns Aitken, the photographer and contributor of the project, was an academic physician/psychiatrist in Rehabilitation Medicine, becoming Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and retiring as Vice-Principal at the University of Edinburgh in 1994. He was born in Dunoon, Argyll in 1933. He has had a life-long interest in photography, and in completing projects. He lives in a nearby street, and attended to photograph some of those at the party. He was awarded the CBE in 1998 for his contribution to the Health Services.

Keywords: giraffe, lion, animals, birds, Africa, safari

Location of Project Material: Outside Scotland

[1038] National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP)

Aerial photographs kindly licensed to Scran from the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP). See more at http://www.ncap.org.uk.

Location of Project Material: All over Scotland, Outside Scotland, Borders, Central Scotland, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Grampian, Highlands, Lothian, Orkney, Shetland, Strathclyde, Tayside, Western Isles

[1037] Family Histories: The Fimister Family

In 1909, Mary Ann Fimister (nee Kelly) travelled to Kolkata (then Calcutta) to visit her husband, James, who worked in India as a jute salesman. Her children remained at home in Broughty Ferry near Dundee. Shortly after arriving in the sub-continent, she contracted smallpox and died. She was buried in The Scottish Cemetery. Just over one hundred years later, Mary Ann's great-grandson, Gerald Main, travelled to Kolkata with his son, Richard, to find her grave.

This project looks at a selection of photographs and documents relating to Mary Ann Fimister and the family history research carried out by her ancestors in Kolkata.

Location of Project Material: Outside Scotland, Tayside

[1036] RCAHMS Collections Highlights

Miscellaneous archive material from RCAHMS digitised content on Canmore, http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/

Keywords: RCAHMS collections aerial architecture built heritage environment archaeology

Location of Project Material: All over Scotland

[1035] The Scottish Cemetery in Calcutta | part 2

The Scottish and Dissenters Cemetery was established in 1820 to cater to the needs of the large Scottish population in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Scots were involved in thriving enterprises, including tea, jute, paper and transportation. Many performed administrative or military function within the East India Company and, later, the British Raj, whose capital was here. For those Scots living in India there was the constant threat of illness and diseases, such as cholera, diphtheria, typhoid and malaria and the rate of infant mortality was extremely high.

Over ninety percent of those buried in the cemetery bear names of Scots origin, such as Anderson, McGregor, Campbell and Ross. Around ten percent are Bengali. Many of the gravestones are carved from Scottish sandstone or granite and still bear inscriptions of the monumental masons who made them, indicating that almost all of them would have been made in Scotland and transported to Kolkata for use. The cemetery was abandoned in the 1950s, following India's independence.

The cemetery was surveyed and recorded by a team from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland in 2008. These photographs show some of that work being undertaken. There are also photographs from St Andrew's Church, which adjoins the cemetery, and of memorials inside the church which are dedicated to many Scots who lived and worked in India.

Part two of this project gathers together images of gravestones in the cemetery.

Keywords: India, Kolkata

Location of Project Material: Outside Scotland