Article Date: 01 April 2011

Categories: Live | Visit

The Berwickshire village of Chirnside is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of its world famous son, the philosopher David Hume, with a Philosophy Festival and Enlightenment Evening on Saturday 30th April.

David Hume grew up on Ninewells Farm in Chirnside, and became, in the words of Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, “the greatest British philosopher, and perhaps, along with Socrates, the most loved of philosophers anywhere.” Hume’s friend, the economist Adam Smith, described him as “approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit.”

Borderers can therefore feel pride in David Hume as a thinker and a man revered around the world, yet few in his homeland know who he was, what he did, or why he was great – until now, as Chirnside hopes you join in the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of his birth. So how exactly do they plan to celebrate a philosopher?

The aim for the festivities is to open up the subjects of David Hume, philosophy and Scotland’s Enlightenment to all ages of the public. A free exhibition, ‘The Life and Times of David Hume 1711-1776’, begins on Hume’s birthday on Tuesday 26th April in Chirnside Community Centre, and will be open every day to visitors from 10am to 4pm until Saturday 30th April – the big day for the festivities.

On Saturday 30th April, there will be two festivals: a Philosophy Festival in Chirnside during the day from 10am to 5pm, and then an Enlightenment Evening and Georgian Banquet at Paxton House from 5:30pm to 9:30pm. All events are free, but tickets to the three-course banquet in Paxton’s magnificent picture gallery will cost £22, available from Paxton House on 01289 386 291 and www.paxtonhouse.co.uk.

The Philosophy Festival begins at 10am beside the exhibition in Chirnside Community Centre with a living history demonstration of village life in Georgian Chirnside, featuring costumed characters and Fiona Houston, author of ‘The Garden Cottage Diaries: My Year in the Eighteenth Century’.

Children are natural philosophers they say, so at 11am in Chirnside Primary School over 30 pupils will perform a philosophy play called ‘Unanswerable Questions’, specially written for David Hume’s tercentenary by teacher Eloner Crawford.

Hume’s statue may guard the gates of the High Court in Scotland’s capital, in high honour opposite the Heart of Midlothian and St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile, but yet there’s no mark to him in the land or village where he came from. So at 12:30pm in the heart of the village centre, Scottish Borders Council Chief Executive David Hume will unveil a permanent plaque in tribute to his namesake. In further honour at 2pm, visitors are also invited to Ninewells House to enjoy welcome drinks and the Ninewells Walk, where Chirnside’s new David Hume information board will be revealed.

So who was David Hume, and what was his philosophy? To answer these questions Roderick Graham, author of Hume’s biography ‘The Great Infidel’, will disclose the life story of this great man and thinker from 3:15pm and 4pm in the wood panelled salon of The Red Lion in Chirnside village centre. Then, in the same venue from 4pm to 4:45pm, philosophers Dr Alasdair Richmond and Dr Peter Millican of the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford will open up the mind of Britain’s greatest philosopher. Refreshments will be available from the bar, including a pint of Enlightenment: the new David Hume beer.

Finally at 4:45pm, at a prize-winning ceremony in Chirnside’s Community Centre closing the Philosophy Festival, a new annual David Hume Essay Prize will be awarded to the Border high school pupil who has shown the most promising argumentative skills to be the land’s next great philosopher.

A series of thinking walks called ‘Border Brains’, including a new David Hume Walk in Chirnside, will also be open during the festival to guide locals and visitors through the ideas and lives of Berwickshire’s geniuses, and the quiet, beautiful landscape that gave them birth.

As the Philosophy Festival draws to an end in Chirnside, the Enlightenment Evening at Paxton House begins. Free house tours from 5:30pm to 6pm will introduce visitors to one of Britain’s finest Palladian mansions, designed by architect John Adam for the Home family in 1763, and recently restored as a heritage trust and museum to full Georgian splendour.

The three course Georgian banquet then starts at 6pm in Paxton’s magnificent Picture Gallery, featuring recipes from Elisabeth Cleland’s ‘Scottish Cookery’: a cookbook written in 1755 during David Hume’s lifetime, and republished by Paxton House. For a full menu and tickets, visit www.paxtonhouse.co.uk. There then follows at 7:30pm two free talks focusing on Scotland’s Enlightenment and how Borderers helped shape the modern world.

First, in Paxton’s Hayloft Gallery, Dr Peter Millican explores how the Borders and its great Enlightenment thinkers shaped David Hume’s philosophy. Tea and coffee in Paxton’s tearoom then follows from 8:15pm to 8:45pm, for conviviality and conversation between talks. Then finally from 8:45pm to 9:30pm, again in the Hayloft, the life story and ground-breaking discoveries of the Berwickshire farmer and ‘father of geology’ James Hutton will be revealed by Denise Walton, curator of Paxton’s James Hutton Exhibition, and expert for the BBC TV series ‘Men of Rock’.

A free programme, including a venue map and a list of local places to eat and walk, can be picked up during the day at the exhibition in Chirnside Community Centre. In the meantime, the tercentenary’s full list of events can be viewed at www.chirnside.org.uk/. Contact sandy.neil@scotborders.gov.uk for more details, or if you’d like to get involved. Professor Fenton Robb will also be introducing David Hume to Council staff at a presentation at 1pm on Friday 15th April in Committee Room 2.

Something to think about.