Evolving Estates: Community and Conservation in the Green Belt

Surrounding the city in the heart of Patrick Geddes’ valley are the fields and agricultural estates which once upon a time provided both its food, and for the luckier few, leisured retreats from its crowds and hubbub.

Now they supply cheap land for cheap homes. To Edinburgh’s west and south, eighteenth-century landscapes are filled with new houses, shopping centres and warehouses. Here and there, a mansion or two offers reminders of what was once the city’s hinterland. 

This session will bring together diverse stakeholders of this shifting world to discuss the possibilities and problematics that are presented by the largest part of the city: its outer suburbs.

Lindsay Aitken, chair of Gracemount Mansion Development Trust, founded the community group ‘Friends of the Mansion’, to raise awareness and gather support for the Gracemount Mansion project, and in November 2022 established GMDT as a charity. GMDT are working to develop and reopen The Mansion, surrounding buildings and greenspaces, as a community hub offering a range of learning, training, volunteering, social, environmental and heritage opportunities and activities, that benefit the mental and physical health & wellbeing of the community.

Lindsay will discuss the tensions between modern expectations for listed buildings and their practical limitations, including the positives and complex challenges of creating meaningful community hubs in historic spaces.

Andrew Hopetoun is Chairman of Hopetoun Estates and resident trustee at Hopetoun House. Hopetoun, with its related estates, is managed as a diversified rural tourism, hospitality, events, agricultural and property business.

Andrew will discuss Hopetoun and it's related estates, the relationship with people and places.