1708 Alexander Learmont, Mealmaker.
1710 William Muir, Farmer.
1720 James Littlejohn, Farmer.
1730? John Littlejohn formerly tenant at Golf Hall cleared his outstanding rent.
1733 Notice was served on John Gordon, tenant of Golf Hall, to remove by Michaelmas.
1760 William Erskine, Ploughman.
An important inn and posting house on the Edinburgh-Glasgow road at the beginning of the 19th century, Robert Hislop was the Inn keeper 1806 to 1822. Andrew Cochran followed him. (In 1743 Glasgow Town Council attempted to set up a stagecoach service between the town and Edinburgh, however this venture came to nothing. It was not until 1749 that the first public conveyance, called ‘The Glasgow and Edinburgh Caravan’, was started between the two towns. In May the same year it took 12 hours to cover the forty miles separating the towns).
1833 Edinburgh Directory, Robert Reed, Innkeeper. Robert had been a gardener at Ravelston before taking to Inn keeping. On his death in 1840 his widow, Isabella, continued the business. Robert Stevenson, keeper of the horses, and Arthur Tallas, a strapper, assisted her, there was also an ostler. Mrs Reid’s establishment had two women servants, both Scottish and eight Englishmen.
Many accounts are written about travels in Scotland, a number of which describe the conditions in the Inns, none mention Golf Hall.
The Journal of an English Medical Officer in the Duke of Cumberland’s Army, in 'The Contrast' (1825), tells us about two such establishments, one at Eyemouth, plenty of claret, and very cheap, the cookery was so nasty, as were the women. The other at Haddington, the nastiness of their food, together with their dirty beds, makes me always in fear of either a surfeit or itch.
Other accounts tell us: -
The hideous Inns, knowing travellers dined on eggs. A couple of roasted hens (as they call’em), very poor, new killed, the skin much broke with plucking, black with smoke and greazed with bad butter, were placed before Burt. He asked for eggs.
Dorothy Wordsworth, at Inveroran found the butter not eatable, the barley cakes fusty, and the oat bread so hard that I could not chew it and there were only four eggs in the house, which they had boiled as hard as stones.
Joseph Taylor, at Linton could only get a few eggs and a neck of mutton as black as a shoe.
Dr. Spier, going to his chamber in an Edinburgh Inn trod in a birds nest.
Sir John Perceval was so dismayed at the accommodation in a tavern at Langholm that he turned and fled back to his own country. ‘I ate all the while in my gloves for fear of the itch, which boldly shewed itself on my landlady’s fingers and legs. The butter was of twenty different colours and stuck with hairs like mortar, so that I desired we might have the butter and hairs by themselves, that I might mix them as I pleased myself.’
The tavern in Haddington had knives and forks for the table on which, however, one glass still went round with the bottle.
There are so many reports like these that it is a wonder anyone travelled at all.
When W. R. Ramsay was master of the hunt 1830-50 and the hounds were normally kept at Barnton. However they were kept at Golf Hall when hunting was done in the south and east of Linlithgowshire.
Isabella Reid (35),
Robert (16),
Andrew (13),
Isabella (12),
William (8),
There are two female servants and eleven male.
The old private school at Gogar village became the Whip’s house.
John Rogers (60) retired Stable Keeper,
Jane (60), his wife,
three servants.
The hunt had kennels at various places until 1857 when the old inn and kennels were put in order to become the hunt headquarters.
1860 owned by the Linlithgow Hunt, John Atkinson hunted the hounds for Sir David Baird and Sir Alexander Kinloch. He was huntsman and kennel master in the Lothians from 1860-1887. His associate, a fellow huntsman, James Stacey, lived with him in Foxville in Clermiston Road, Corstorphine when they retired.
Maria Stacey (41) Huntsman’s wife,
James (16), Insurance Clerk.
1864 Charles Ramsay
1866 Trustees of Mackie, (t) Mathew Young
John Aitchison (41) Huntsman and family,
James Bilston (28) Head Groom (over 11 grooms),
George Tait (25), Kennel man and family
1880s the hunt went on excursions to East Lothian. In the morning the hounds went by road to Waverley Station where they were entrained, and returned the same way in the evening.
John Atkinson (51) Huntsman and family,
John Davis (27) first Whipper,
three Grooms,
George Tait Kennel man and family.
first whip Ernest Cotesworth (29) and family,
three Grooms,
two stable boys,
two Kennel men,
2nd whip
Huntsman.
The Hunt remained at these premises until the outbreak of the war in 1939 which meant their demise.
Now demolished, the site is occupied by a bungalow.