Henry Home - Lord Kames, lawyer (1696 - 1782)

Henry Home was a lawyer from Berwickshire who joined the Faculty of Advocates in 1723. When appointed a judge in 1752 he took the title Lord Kames.

He was a leading agricultural improver of his day, most notably at Blair Drummond on the estates of his wife, where he partially reclaimed large areas of the huge Flanders Moss.

He had a finger in many pies, helping to manage those estates forfeited by Jacobite landowners after the ’45 Rebellion; and he was also on the Board of Trustees for Encouraging the Fisheries, Arts and Manufactures of Scotland.

He became a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He was a founder member of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society and a luminary of the Select Society.

As a man of ideas, he was also the author of many books, covering everything from philosophy, history, literature and law to weighty tomes on agricultural improvement: 'The Gentleman Farmer', published in 1776, was over 400 pages long.