Cremona, 100 Tay Street

The unusually named Cremona Villa was the home of William Crawford Honeyman, who lived here for forty years with his daughter Liza until his death in 1919. William Honeyman was an accomplished violinist and composer, and was a prolific writer of violin instruction manuals. The house is named after Cremona in Italy, widely recognised as the home of the finest violin production.

William Honeyman the Writer

But William, or Pa Honeyman as he was affectionately known by his acquaintances, had another string to his bow – excuse the very appropriate pun. He was fiction editor for the People’s Journal and wrote a string of romances for the People’s Friend.

His writing talents were mostly appreciated however in the series of Edinburgh detective novels he wrote under his pseudonym  James McGovan. These were so highly regarded that a publishing magazine in 1888 described them as ‘the best detective stories…’. Indeed, historians believe Edinburgh resident Arthur Conan Doyle was aware of and influenced by McGovan’s tales and went on to publish his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887.

Liza Honeyman

Daughter Liza was even more talented as a violin player than her father was. She had made her first solo appearance at the age of seven and it seems that she truly was the Nicola Benedetti of her day, praised for her faultless execution and artistic expression. Her violin, which had been made in Cremona in 1742, was described as the finest in the world. Liza was a well-known figure around the village and she continued to live at Cremona until her death in 1958, aged 83.