Gladstone's Land (National Trust for Scotland)

This guide to Gladstone's Land on Edinburgh's Lawnmarket opens in 1934, when restorers scraping through fourteen layers of paint uncovered a forgotten seventeenth-century ceiling, saved from demolition at the last moment by the National Trust for Scotland. It traces the building back to merchant Thomas Gledstanes, who bought the property in 1617 with his wife Bessie Cunningham and pushed its front out over the street below. Their initials are still cut into the stone above the arcade.