- published: 27 May 2016
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Coordinates: 55°53′45″N 3°18′27″W / 55.895956°N 3.307439°W / 55.895956; -3.307439
Currie (Scottish Gaelic: Currach) is a civil parish and suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland, situated 10 kilometres south west of the city centre. A former village within the County of Midlothian, it lies to the south west of the city, between Juniper Green (NE) and Balerno (SW) on the Lanark Road. Administratively, Currie falls within the jurisdiction of the City of Edinburgh Council.
In 1995 the population of Currie was 6,343 and it contained 2,300 houses, 850 of them less than 20 years old.
There is no accepted derivation of the name Currie but it is possibly from the Scottish Gaelic word curagh/curragh, a wet or boggy plain, or from the Brythonic word curi, a dell or hollow. The neighbouring suburb of Balerno derives its name from Scottish Gaelic, whilst the nearby Pentland Hills derive their name from Brythonic, so either is possible.
The earliest record of a settlement in the Currie area is a Bronze Age razor (1800 BC) found at Kinleith Mill and the stone cists (500 BC) at Duncan's Belt and Blinkbonny. There are a few mentions of this area in mediaeval and early modern documents. One of the first is when Robert of Kildeleith became Chancellor of Scotland in 1249. Kildeleith means Chapel by the Leith, and survives today as Kinleith. Robert the Bruce gave Riccarton as a wedding present in 1315 and in 1392 the land passed to the family of Bishop Wardlaw. In 1612 the land went to Ludovic Craig, a Senator of the College of Justice. In 1818 it passed to the female line and became the property of the Gibson-Craigs.
Barbara Flynn Currie is a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives, representing the 25th District since 1979.
Currie was first elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1978, and assumed office in January 1979. She represents the 25th District in Chicago which includes the communities of Woodlawn, South Shore, Hyde Park, and Kenwood. Rep. Currie serves as majority leader of the Illinois House of Representatives, a role she has had since 1997. She is the widow of the legal scholar David P. Currie.
In December 2008, following the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Currie was named by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan as the chairperson of the Illinois House committee to investigate Governor Blagojevich for possible impeachment as a result of federal corruption charges against him. Blagojevich was subsequently impeached by the House and removed from office by the Illinois Senate.
In February 2009, Currie was caught in a follow-on controversy over the impeachment testimony of now-U.S. Senator Roland Burris. Burris had been named by Blagojevich to fill President Barack Obama's Senate seat, after the emergence of the corruption charges against Blagojevich but before Blagojevich's removal from office. Burris had neglected to mention fund-raising contacts by Blagojevich's brother Rob in his testimony, but then filed an affidavit with Currie, listing three such contacts, shortly after Feb. 5. Word of the new information did not reach the public, or the Republicans in the House, until its release in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 13, leading to questions of Currie and the Democrats by Republicans including ranking impeachment committee member Jim Durkin and House party leader Tom Cross.