Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage
| Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage | |
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| Grid reference: | NH790674 |
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| Website: | Hugh Millers Birthplace Cottage and Museum |
Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage is a house in Cromarty in Cromartyshire where Hugh Miller was born. The house has been turned into museum and is owned and run by the National Trust for Scotland.
Hugh Miller
Miller was a self-taught geologist, writer and folklorist. At 17 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and his work in quarries, together with walks along the local shoreline, led him to the study of geology. In 1829 he published a volume of poems, and soon afterwards became involved in political and religious controversies, first connected to the Reform Bill, and then with the division in the Church of Scotland which led to the Disruption of 1843.
In 1834 he became accountant in one of the local banks, and in the next year brought out his Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland. In 1840 the popular party in the Kirk, with which he had been associated, started a newspaper, the Witness, and Miller was called to be editor in Edinburgh, a position which he retained till the end of his life.
Among his geological works are The Old Red Sandstone (1841), Footprints of the Creator (1850), The Testimony of the Rocks (1856) and Sketch-book of Popular Geology. Of these books, perhaps The Old Red Sandstone was the best-known, and "Old Red Sandstone" is still a term used to collectively describe sedimentary rocks deposited as a result of the Caledonian orogeny in the late Silurian, Devonian and earliest part of the Carboniferous period.