Gerard Baldwin Brown's Early Preservation Campaigns in Edinburgh

In July 1880 Edinburgh University announced Gerard Baldwin Brown's appointment to the newly instituted Watson Gordon Professorship of Fine Art.

In the fifty years that Baldwin Brown occupied the chair he not only undertook pioneering work on Anglo-Saxon architecture and culture but pursued a long-term and sometimes acrimonious campaign to preserve Edinburgh's historic buildings and monuments. This lecture described the man and his preservation activities, and sought to explain what motivated a Professor of Fine Art to become involved in this challenging pursuit.