First up is Joan Stewart, also known as Joanna, daughter of King James I of Scotland, who, in the mid-15^th century married the then occupant of Dalkeith Palace, 1^st Earl of Morton. Joanna was a deaf mute which gave her the by-name of muta domina, the ‘deaf lady’ of Dalkeith. She used sign language to communicate before any formalised system existed.

However, her importance as representing a minority is posthumous: she and her husband were buried together in St Nicholas Buccleuch, Dalkeith’s oldest church, their tombs covered with effigies made of sandstone. Joanna’s effigy is believed to be the world’s oldest image of a known deaf person and as such today is a celebrated point of reference for the international deaf-mute community.

In the later 18^th century, Dalkeith Palace became a celebrated salon of the Scottish Enlightenment. Elizabeth Montagu, the third Duchess, exercised strong, farsighted and financially independent patronage across all the arts. This included music, languages, dance, painting and craft by male and female artists alike and refugees fleeing the excesses of the French Revolution as well as the Napoleonic wars.

In addition, her family supported countless individuals including William Sancho, son of Ignatius Sancho, the Black African man of letters who served three generations of the family before setting up his own business. Young William became librarian to the Buccleuchs. Elizabeth keenly and generously supported many charitable causes including a blind organist and a teacher who had been born without hands whose appointment as school master she facilitated.