Glasgow in 1820 and worked there for another four years while attending evening classes at Anderson's Institution, probably studying practical subjects like draughtsmanship, geometry and science. While in Glasgow he made a detailed study of Glasgow Cathedral and suggested restorations and additions. In May 1824 Kemp went to London, but he failed to find permanent work there and disliked the city, so he stayed only a little over a year. From London, Kemp made for France in 1825, where he visited and studied more gothic buildings, including the great cathedrals and churches of Abbeville, Beauvais, Amiens, Paris and—in Belgium—Antwerp. At this time Kemp considered emigrating to Canada, but he instead returned to Scotland in 1827 because of the commercial embarrassments of a near relative. Edinburgh Kemp returned to Edinburgh in 1827 and never left Scotland again. He married Elizabeth Wilson Bonnar (1808-1889) on 11 September 1832. They had four children: two boys and two girls. Kemp now had a knowledge of Gothic architecture unrivalled in Scotland, and in England surpassed by only three other men. He had ambitions to become an architect, but he had not received specific training, and much of the architectural establishment was opposed to him. He became a Freemason, but the move failed to improve his prospects. While he had produced detailed, but uncommissioned, designs for the theoretical reconstructions of Glasgow Cathedral, Rosslyn Chapel, Trinity College Kirk and Melrose Abbey, he had never designed a new building. In order to support himself and his wife and children Kemp became a cabinet-maker, but though he made impressively-crafted furniture he was largely unsuccessful. He was skilled at draughtsmanship, and drawings he made of Melrose Abbey were exhibited in the Scottish Academy Exhibition of 1830 and helped to make his name as an architectural illustrator. He was well-paid when the pictures were sold, but they could not support him adequately in the long term. Kemp's elder brother, Thomas, helped by securing a job for him with the architect William Burn on the Duke of Buccleuch's estate at Bowhill near Selkirk. Burn engaged Kemp as a competent draughtsman, entrusting him with drawings for the new Bowhill House, and in 1831 commissioning him to make a wooden architectural model of Burn's design for a new palace for Buccleuch at Dalkeith. It took Kemp two years to build the model. By 1834 Kemp's ideas on the restoration of Glasgow Cathedral and his