📍Lochfield Farm, Darvel, East Ayrshire KA17 0LN, UK
1881 – 1895“I was born in 1881 at Lochfield, a remote hill farm of some eight hundred acres on the moors above Darvel in Ayrshire, the third of four children of my father's second marriage. My father died when I was seven, and my mother and elder brother kept the farm going. My brothers and I roamed the streams, valleys and moors, catching rabbits and fish and watching everything; I always said I unconsciously learned a great deal from nature there. I walked miles across the moors to the little school at Loudoun Moor, then to Darvel, and won a scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy. At thirteen I went to London to join my brother Tom, worked in a shipping office, and later used a small inheritance to study medicine at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington. In 1928, back from a holiday, I noticed mould killing the bacteria on a dish I had left on my bench. A farm boy's habit of noticing the unexpected gave the world penicillin. Darvel has a memorial to me now.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons