If you like old graveyards, then Edinburgh has old graveyards aplenty. If you like old graveyards with lots of ostentatious and over the top tombstones, then Dean Cemetery is the place to go. It is Edinburgh’s Père Lachaise where the crème de la crème of Victorian society had their mortal remains interred. Walking down the rows and rows of graves is like walking through a who’s who of Nineteenth Century Edinburgh Society…and it’s even got a pyramid!
.JPG "The Pink Pyramid - Tomb of Andrew Rutherfurd, Lord Rutherfurd")
Dean Cemetery sits in the grounds that
were once part of Dean House. The
cemetery was laid out in 1845 to a design by David Cousin. It opened in 1846 and soon established itself
as the most fashionable cemetery in Edinburgh.
.JPG "View over cemetery from the grounds of Dean Gallery")
The cemetery was planted out like a
garden with many different types of trees.
The idea being that the trees would provide an everchanging vista with
light and dark foliage contrasting against each other. There were also many weeping type trees
planted that now in their maturity hang over and seem to mourn the tombstones beneath
them.
If you fancy spending eternity here, the
cemetery still has plots available that can be purchased from the Dean Cemetery
Trust, the private company that owns the grounds.
.JPG "Row of gravestones in the cemetery")
.jpg "The tomb of James Buchanan, businessman & philanthropist")
.jpg "The rather ornate gravestone of John Leishman")
.JPG "Gravestones and trees")
As I wandered around the cemetery today,
and after I’d made my way past rows and rows of tombs for vicars, lawyers, and
huge monuments to those who died in various conflicts while protecting the
Empire, the sort of conflicts we now prefer to forget, I found quite a few
interesting characters. There were
various academics, actors, artists, architects, designers, engineers,
explorers, philosophers, physicians, and politicians. There was the grave of Sir Thomas Bouch, the
man who designed the Tay Bridge. You
know, the one that fell down. The
memorial to James Naysmith, the inventor of the steam hammer. Then there were
the graves of the artists Samuel Bough, Francis Cadell and more recently that
of John Bellany. There was the effigy, smiling wistfully from the gravestone of
the theatre director and owner Frederick Wyndham, and there was the grave of
Lieutenant John Irving, one of the few whose bodies was recovered and brought
back from the ill-fated Franklin Expedition which set out to look for the
fabled Northwest Passage in the Artic. Then of course there was the pink
pyramid – the tomb of Andrew Rutherfurd, one time Lord Advocate and MP for
Leith Burghs. He was actually born
Andrew Greenfield, but the family changed their name to his mother’s maiden
name after his father, the Reverend William Greenfield, was disgraced in a sex
scandal. It was discovered that William
had been having an affair with another man and this being seen as a heinous
crime at that time led to the poor man being excommunicated from the church,
forced to resign his posts, and expelled from polite society. He fled from Edinburgh to a small village in the
North of England and spent the rest of his days there.
.jpg "A tree lined pathway through the cemetery")
.JPG "Gravestones with effigies of the occupants beneath")
.JPG "Gravestone for John Watherston and Elizabeth Millar")
.jpg "A couple of rather grand looking gravestones")
.jpg "Lions head on one of the memorials")
.JPG "Flying dove detail from one of the gravestones")
.jpg "Memorial stone to John Wilson, the Scottish Vocalist")
.JPG "Angels – the gravestone of Isabella Christie")
.JPG "Weeping tree over gravestones")
.JPG "Memorial to James Naysmith – inventor of the steam hammer")
.JPG "Gravestone of the artist David Scott")
Another of those buried in the cemetery
is the artist and photographic pioneer, David Octavius Hill. Hill was born in Perth in 1802 and originally
trained as a painter and lithographer. In
1843 he decided to paint a picture of various clergymen who had been involved
in in the disruption of the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of
Scotland. To secure portraits of all
those who had been involved, all four hundred and seventy of them, he decided
to use photography. To this end he asked
Robert Adamson to help him and the two set up a photographic studio. Hill brought his artistic sensibilities to
photography and produced prints that had the qualities of the great Eighteenth
Century portrait painters. Prints that
soon had the Edinburgh elite flocking to his studios to have their photographs
taken. Hill and Adamson also
photographed the surrounding landscape and working people, such as the
fishwives of Newhaven. Hill died in 1870
and the bust on his grave was sculpted by his wife, Amelia. Today Hill is seen as one of the first people
to transform photography into an art form.
.jpg "The grave of David Octavius Hill – artist & photographic pioneer")
.jpg "Bust of David Octavius Hill")
Within the cemetery there are many gravestones
that carry the facial effigies of those long dead and lying in the ground below. There is something almost surreal about
coming face to face with a three dimensional image of the graves occupier,
usually sculpted with a knowing smile or quizzical look on their face. One of these effigies is of the artist George
Paul Chalmers. The way the sculpture of
his face has weathered has given it an almost death mask look. Rather than looking out at us in that knowing
way, he just looks dead. His hair flows
back as if he’s lying on his death bed, his cheeks are sunken and his eyes,
though open, have no life or joy in them.
He basically looks a bit miserable, which is maybe not surprising as it
seems the poor chap was murdered during a violent robbery…maybe.
.jpg "Effigy of George Paul Chalmers")
Chalmers was born in 1833 in Montrose
and showed promise as an artist from a very young age. When he was twenty, he went to study in
Edinburgh and soon became renowned as a portrait artist. Later he turned his hand to landscapes and in
1871 became a member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
On the evening of Friday 15th
February 1878 Chalmers had attended a banquet at the Royal Scottish
Academy. On leaving he made his way to a
nearby pub for a few more drinks. Being
a man with a fiery temper when he had a drink in him, Chalmers got into a silly
and trivial argument with some fellow artists, took umbrage that they disagreed
with him and stormed out in a drunken huff.
In the early hours of Saturday morning Chalmers
was found lying seriously injured on a stair in South Charlotte Street. His
wallet, watch and hat were all found to be missing leading the police to
believe that he had been the victim of a violent mugging. He died of his injuries in the Edinburgh
Royal Infirmary a few days later.
Despite various people coming forward and naming those they suspected of
carrying out the assault and robbery no one was ever prosecuted or convicted of
Chalmers’ murder. Some suspected that
being quite drunk he may have actually fallen down what was described as a
dangerous stair to passers-by and that an opportunist thief on seeing him lying
there had stolen his possessions.
Nothing was ever proved either way, so he may have been murdered or he
may have fallen, unfortunately we will never know.
Out of all the memorials in the cemetery
there is one to a man who just has to be mentioned. A man still relevant to our times, especially
to all biscuit lovers out there. He is
of course Robert McVitie, the man who transformed his family bakery into the
biscuit kingdom that is McVitie’s. Rich
Tea anyone?
.JPG "Memorial to Robert McVitie")
I left the Skulferatu that accompanied
me on today’s jaunt, in the central hollow of a one of the many large trees in
the graveyard.
.JPG "Gravestones and trees")
.jpg "Skulferatu #76")
.JPG "Skulferatu #76 in a tree hollow")
.JPG "Close up of Skulferatu #76 in a tree hollow")
.jpg "Map showing location of Skulferatu #76")
The coordinates for the location of the
Skulferatu are –
Latitude 55.952310
Longitude -3.223194
I used the following sources for information on Dean Cemetery and those interred within –
Dean Cemetery Official
Website
Welcome to Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh
National Galleries of
Scotland
David Octavius Hill |
National Galleries of Scotland
David Octavius Hill -
Wikipedia
Edinburgh Evening News -
Wednesday 30 April 1930
Dundee Courier – 21
February 1878
Oban Times, and
Argyllshire Advertiser – 23 February 1878
Montrose, Arbroath and
Brechin review; and Forfar and Kincardineshire advertiser – 14 October 1887
Article and photographs are copyright of
© Kevin Nosferatu, unless otherwise specified.
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