Scotsman Obituaries: Elizabeth Lornie, amateur photographer and very private philanthropist

Mrs Lornie died in an Edinburgh nursing home on 23 August at the age of 96. Until her 93rd year she lived at home in Trinity in Edinburgh. She was born in Leith and her husband Douglas Lornie, who predeceased her, was a professional photographer. Photography and cine films were a special interest and hobby for them both.

Mrs Lornie received an inheritance from her parents but she lived simply and felt that these inherited funds should largely be put to good use for charitable purposes. In addition to personal anonymous charitable gifts, she established a charitable trust and over the last 40 years approaching £2 million has been given to a range of good causes and projects, many of them quietly initiated by Mrs Lornie herself.

A further sum of more than £1 million will pass to specified national charities. In addition, Mrs Lornie’s remaining personal estate will be held in the future for charitable purposes, reflecting the kind of projects she supported during her lifetime. The full extent of Mrs Lornie’s philanthropic giving will exceed over £5 million.

Mrs Lornie would have been aghast at being described as a philanthropist and she never wanted or expected any recognition for what she did. She was reluctant to be personally identified in relation to the support she gave to numerous projects.

On those few occasions her presence was required at events marking the start or completion of activities she had funded, she kept in the background and reluctantly agreed to be introduced as “one of the Trustees”. So it was when Mrs Lornie was presented to the then Prince of Wales at the Castle of Mey when she had funded a memorial pathway after the death of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Similarly, Mrs Lornie was self-effacing when she had a private audience and performance with Alfred Brendel, the classical pianist, in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall after she had provided £100,000 for the purchase of a new Steinway concert grand piano. The highlight of that day for Mrs Lornie was when she was about to take the bus back home and the then Lord Provost, Eric Milligan, insisted on taking her back to Trinity in the Lord Provost’s limousine.

Among the extensive number of charitable projects supported by Mrs Lornie was the commissioning of a large tapestry to be held in the University of Edinburgh Medical School at Little France. The design was specially created by the artist Alan Davie whom Mrs Lornie met on several occasions while he was producing various designs for her to select.

She rejected one of the designs because she felt that it was too much like a group of coffins, which she thought was inappropriate for a medical school. The tapestry was woven at the Dovecot Tapestry Studios in Edinburgh.

Mrs Lornie initiated and funded a major photography project over ten years with the Edinburgh International Festival, which involved a selected young photographer spending much of the Festival backstage, and each year an exhibition of the work was shown in The Hub.

Photography also featured with Mrs Lornie’s single biggest project, which was with the National Trust for Scotland and involved donations totalling £250,000 over a five-year period to preserve and digitise the historic photography collections at Canna, Broughton House, Brodie Castle and the Angus Folk Museum, as well as funding symposia focused on the role of woman photographers in the history of local photography in Scotland. An annual prize for photographic work was introduced in conjunction with The Royal Scottish Academy.

Live Music Now was a frequent beneficiary and £50,000 was given to fund a five-year project to examine the impact experiencing live music has on people affected by dementia. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra received support to fund their own dementia project as part of the orchestra’s community outreach. During the Covid pandemic, a bursary fund was set up through the Royal Scottish Academy to support Scottish artists affected by loss of employment.

Elizabeth Lornie regarded her charitable giving as the best portion of her long life, her little, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love. It is right that her private philanthropy should be remembered now.

Obituaries

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