Notes from the North 12
James Hamilton,. 1st Earl of Abercorn Look up the definition of undertaker in any modern English dictionary and you will find something like, ‘a person whose job it is to prepare dead bodies that are going to be buried or cremated and to organise funerals’. But there is another, less well-known definition of that word which I came across while researching the origins of the name Abercorn . Portobello and its neighbouring areas have Abercorn Road/Gardens/ Grove/Drive/Avenue and Park, a great many shops, clinics, social clubs and even a large cemetery with Abercorn in their titles. Scotland is said to have the most concentrated pattern of land-ownership in Europe, possibly in the developed world). Roughly half the land is still owned by fewer than 500 people, among whom a number of dukes and earls. Some Scottish dukes have fallen on hard times but a lot, the Dukes of Buccleuch, Argyll and Sutherland for example, are doing quite nicely. I already knew this much so I shouldn’...