This burial lair at Greyfriars has no memorials within, just an inscription above the doorway saying “Wiliam Inglis Surgeon 1792”. William Inglis was a prominent Scottish surgeon, serving as Deacon of the Incorporation of Surgeons and twice as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edinburgh. As such he was a key figure in late 18th-century Edinburgh medicine, a period in which Edinburgh served as the global leader in medical research, education and practice.
He is also well known for his role as an early captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the oldest golf club in the world, famously painted by David Allan in 1787. Allan, a member of the same golf club, shows Inglis, wearing the red colours of the club, with his caddy on Leith Links, where the club was then located (it’s now based at Muirfield in East Lothian). Behind Inglis, the annual trophy presented by the City – a golf club with silver balls attached – is being paraded across the Links. Golf was a popular pastime among Edinburgh’s surgeons and other high ranking professionals, during the peak enlightenment years. This artwork holds historical significance as one of the earliest images of organized golf in Scotland, capturing the sport’s evolution from informal recreation to a structured gentlemanly pursuit on natural links courses like Leith, which featured undulating turf, dunes, and coastal hazards. Golf historians recognise this period in Edinburgh as laying the foundations for the huge growth in popularity of rules based golf played at clubs all over the country and beyond.
William Inglis died in 1792, leaving a legacy that bridged surgical excellence and the foundational years of organized golf.
