The intended location for this unexecuted wall monument is unknown. Unlike most of Adam's designs for funerary monuments it is simple and impersonal, but we know that it was intended to commemorate the life of Mrs Margaret Calderwood (1715-74), the daughter of Sir James Steuart, solicitor-general of Scotland, and a noted diarist. She had disseminated her journal and correspondence among friends following a tour of the Netherlands which had been prompted by a desire to visit her brother, Sir James Steuart, who had fled England following the Jacobite uprising of 1745. The monument was probably commissioned by her only son, Lieutenant-Colonel William Calderwood (d.1787), as her husband, Thomas Calderwood (d.1773) of Polton near Edinburgh, had predeceased her. Thomas had subscribed to The ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (1764), and therefore the family was familiar with Adam.

This design for the Calderwood monument was reused in 1992 at Greyfriar’s Kirk, Edinburgh - where many of the Adam family are buried - to commemorate Robert Adam himself. According to King this design was chosen for its economy of ornament.

See also: Polton, Lasswade, Midlothian

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 53; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 261, 263

Frances Sands, 2011