The development of Stockbridge from a small village to today’s thriving neighbourhood owes much to Sir Henry Raeburn, yet before 1780, involvement in its development would have seemed inconceivable to the young painter.
When Henry Raeburn was born in 1756, his father was a prosperous owner of a yard-boiling mill in Stockbridge and had just expanded his workshop. However, in 1761, Robert Raeburn was convicted of forgery and was ‘stood on the pillory at the Crosswell’ where the villagers pelted him with ‘rotten eggs, turnips, potatoes, dirt, stones, and every species of filth or rubbish they could collect together’. A few years later, both he and his wife
