Pioneering Fife photographer’s portraits sell for more than 20-times auction price

The newly discovered album featured some of the earliest photographs of Edinburgh taken by Charles George Hood Kinnear, who was born in Kinloch.

They went under the hammer at Lyle & Turnbull on Wednesday, and sold for £85,000 - more than 20 times the estimated price of £4000.

The salt prints taken by Kinnear, a pioneering photographer and architect who died in 1894, belonged to the family of Kinloch House.

His mother, Christian Jane Greenshields, was the only child of the wealthy Edinburgh advocate, John Boyd Greenshields.

He became a founding member of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1856 and the same year entered into partnership with Edinburgh architect, John Dick Peddie, creating Peddie & Kinnear – one of Scotland’s most celebrated architectural firms of the day.

It was responsible for designing much of modern Edinburgh, including Cockburn Street.

Not only did Kinnear exhibit his innovative images in Scotland and across Europe, he also designed a folding camera, thus cementing his reputation at the dawn of photography.

Dominic Somerville-Brown, Lyon & Turnbull’s rare books, manuscripts and maps specialist, said: “There is always great anticipation on the day of a sale and we knew that the items being auctioned would attract a great deal of interest.

“That said, one can never know just how much interest there will be, nor just how much people will be prepared to pay to own a piece of history."