
Luke Batterham
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Senior Valuer
William Lithgow (1852-1645?), born in Lanark, travelled from Shetland and Orkney to the Ionian Islands, Athens, Smyrna, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Aleppo, and onwards with a caravan of Armenians and Turks, via Damascus to Galilee and Jerusalem. His spirited account of his journeys "is a book of uncommon value and interest, for its descriptions of men and manners even more than of places... it is probably the earliest authority for coffee-drinking in Europe, Turkish baths, a pigeon post between Aleppo and Bagdad... and the importation (since about 1550) of currants from Zante to England..." (DNB).