Sir David inherited the house in 1751. He had it remodelled and the stable block added in 1790 by James Craig. But the most important room at Newhailes is the library. From the 1750s as head of the family, Sir David Dalrymple, the judge Lord Hailes was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, along with Adam Smith and David Hume who borrowed extensively from the library. At the mahogany desk which stands in the shuttered gloom of the two-storey library he wrote the 'Annals of Scottish History', known as the first "modern" history of Scotland. After his death the house passed to Christian Dalrymple.
