Sir John Lauder, 1st Baronet of Fountainhall was born at Melville Mill, Lasswade, in 1595; and the present 18th-century Barony House was known as Lasswade Cottage when Sir Walter Scott rented it (1798-1804). He was visited here by the writer James Hogg (the 'Ettrick Shepherd') and the Wordsworths. Thomas de Quincey, author of "Confessions of an English Opium Eater", also lived in nearby Polton for some years, from 1843, in the cottage now known as de Quincey Cottage. The Scottish landscape artist William McTaggart moved to Lasswade in 1889, and many of his later works depict the Moorfoot Hills.