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The Scottish or Lowland Scottish gravestone is unique to the north of the British Isles. The study of Scottish Lowland Gravestones is essential to the overall study of British monumental inscriptions. The level of symbolism and detail on Scottish stones reached a peak during the 18th century.
The earliest tombs in Scotland are now lost. If Palaeolithic man ever set foot in that country, all traces have been wiped away. However, numerous Mesolithic and Neolithic tombs, cairns, chambered cairns and burial mounds have been discovered and studied. The Bronze and Iron Ages may have pioneered the concept of a modern graveyard for their remains have been found grouped together in much the same manner as today. In addition to using traditional burial methods, they would also create allotments for their dead. Iron Age burials are, however currently rare in Britain.
British archaeological evidence indicates that the custom of burying the dead in or around a church began as early as the 8th century. By the early 12th century, Saxons, Normans and Flemish knights were given lands throughout Scotland. The new lords built chapels and churches on their new estates. With so many servants, beneficiaries and eventually Tenants, the Church land was soon used to bury the dead of the surrounding village.
Very few pre-Reformation stones exist today and those that do are often removed from their original position and given care and shelter in a local museum. Medieval stone coffins, or sarcophagi, are more abundant.
Since 1457, it had been the habit to organise the local Wappenshaw (presenting weaponry for inspection) in the local graveyards. The resulting wounds on the fine sandstone of many rare stones has left them defaced by the continuous bombardment of missiles.
The 16th century, the century in which Scotland played host to her own Protestant Reformation, was a quiet one for Scottish gravestones. It seems that they were seldom produced and are indeed a rare sight today in our old graveyards. More stones were produced in the 17th and 18th centuries.
By the early 17th century, many ancient graveyards had become swollen with so many bodies that their lands were recognisable as burial grounds. Some sites have been subjected to an increase of several feet in height. By the middle of the century, we begin to see more identification marks on the stones. Heraldic devices, craft tools, symbols of mortality and the name, date of birth and often the address of the deceased began to be crammed onto the limited surfaces of the stone.
One side of the headstone was dedicated to written identification while the other was to be used for symbolic expression. The symbolic elements would usually reveal the man's occupation while reminding living viewers of the inevitability of death.
Perhaps the most ambitious period of Headstone carving. Indeed, it was this century that the traditional headstone came to be used as standard. One fact that marks the Lowland Scottish Headstone as unique is that the Headstone took almost a century to penetrate into the highlands, where the older slab and table grave markers were still being used until shortly before the 19th century. The height of 18th-century Scottish Lowland Gravestones can be anywhere between 60 cm and 100 cm. Also unique to the Scottish Lowland gravestone are the materials. Sandstone is an easily carved but easily weathered rock but it was used as the standard gravestone material in the north of Britain. In the south, where marbles and granite were the preferred medium, we see an understandable hesitation on the part of the stonemason to overly decorate the hard stones of England.
18th-century Scottish gravestones are almost always oriented east to west. The part which contains the identification of the cadaver usually faces towards the Holy Land. Since most 18th-century were left relatively unadorned, the rear side of stone was frequently left unmarked. This is the side that invariably faced away from the Holy Land, towards the west. However, in many lowland graveyards, the side usually left unmarked is covered with extravagant designs.
In the mid-18th century, tradesman, craftsmen and tenant farmers found themselves in a time of prosperity. A direct result of this was the increase in carefully inscribed gravestones for the common folk.
The 19th century saw almost all memorial permutations of the past come back with gusto. Wall monuments, crypts, headstones, table and slab stones and even replica Hog Backs were all common designs in Victorian Scotland. The introduction of the Cast-Iron Grave Marker would simply add yet another embellishment to an already decorative art form.
A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a sizeable chamber around and over which a cairn of stones was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves. They are found throughout Britain and Ireland, with the largest number in Scotland.
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Roman catacombs. The term graveyard is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard.
A high cross or standing cross is a free-standing Christian cross made of stone and often richly decorated. There was a unique Early Medieval tradition in Ireland and Britain of raising large sculpted stone crosses, usually outdoors. These probably developed from earlier traditions using wood, perhaps with metalwork attachments, and earlier pagan Celtic memorial stones; the Pictish stones of Scotland may also have influenced the form. The earliest surviving examples seem to come from the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain.
The Lowlands is a cultural and historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Lowlands and the Highlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands.
A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a stele or marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. It is traditional for burials in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions, among others. In most cases, it has the deceased's name, date of birth, and date of death inscribed on it, along with a personal message, or prayer, but may contain pieces of funerary art, especially details in stone relief. In many parts of Europe, insetting a photograph of the deceased in a frame is very common.
The court cairn or court tomb is a megalithic type of chambered cairn or gallery grave. During the period, 3900–3500 BCE, more than 390 court cairns were constructed in Ireland and over 100 in southwest Scotland. The neolithic monuments are identified by an uncovered courtyard connected to one or more roofed and partitioned burial chambers. Many monuments were built in multiple phases in both Ireland and Scotland and later re-used in the Early Bronze Age.
A Pictish stone is a type of monumental stele, generally carved or incised with symbols or designs. A few have ogham inscriptions. Located in Scotland, mostly north of the Clyde-Forth line and on the Eastern side of the country, these stones are the most visible remaining evidence of the Picts and are thought to date from the 6th to 9th century, a period during which the Picts became Christianized. The earlier stones have no parallels from the rest of the British Isles, but the later forms are variations within a wider Insular tradition of monumental stones such as high crosses. About 350 objects classified as Pictish stones have survived, the earlier examples of which holding by far the greatest number of surviving examples of the mysterious symbols, which have long intrigued scholars.
Kilmartin is a small village in Argyll and Bute, western Scotland. It is best known as the centre of Kilmartin Glen, an area with one of the richest concentrations of prehistoric monuments and historical sites in Scotland. It contains over 800 monuments within a six-mile (ten-kilometre) radius. It is home to Kilmartin Museum and the Kilmartin Hotel.
An unmarked grave is one that lacks a marker, headstone, or nameplate indicating that a body is buried there. However, in cultures that mark burial sites, the phrase unmarked grave has taken on a metaphorical meaning.
Ratho is a village in the Rural West Edinburgh area of Edinburgh, Scotland. Its population at the 2011 census was 1,634 based on the 2010 definition of the locality. It was formerly in the old county of Midlothian. Ratho Station, Newbridge and Kirkliston are other villages in the area. The Union Canal passes through Ratho. Edinburgh Airport is situated only 4 miles (7 km) away. The village has a high ratio of its older houses built from whin stone due to a whin quarry nearby. The older, historical, part of the village was designated a Conservation Area in 1971 by Midlothian County Council.
In Christian countries a churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church, which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language and in both Scottish English and Ulster-Scots, this can also be known as a kirkyard.
Belfast City Cemetery is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and Springfield Road, near Milltown Cemetery. It is maintained by Belfast City Council. Vandalism in the cemetery is widespread.
Bowden is a village in the Roxburghshire area of the Scottish Borders, situated 3 miles south of Melrose, 2 miles west of Newtown St Boswells and tucked in the shadow of the Eildon Hills, Scotland.
The Revolutionary War Cemetery, also called the Old Salem Burying Ground, is located on Archibald Street, just off state highway NY 22 in the village of Salem, New York, United States. It is a 2.6-acre (1.1 ha) area with over a thousand graves, at least 100 of which are those of Revolutionary War dead or veterans.
Greyfriars Kirkyard is the graveyard surrounding Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located at the southern edge of the Old Town, adjacent to George Heriot's School. Burials have been taking place since the late 16th century, and a number of notable Edinburgh residents are interred at Greyfriars. The Kirkyard is operated by City of Edinburgh Council in liaison with a charitable trust, which is linked to but separate from the church. The Kirkyard and its monuments are protected as a category A listed building.
The architecture of Scotland in the prehistoric era includes all human building within the modern borders of Scotland, before the arrival of the Romans in Britain in the first century BCE. Stone Age settlers began to build in wood in what is now Scotland from at least 8,000 years ago. The first permanent houses of stone were constructed around 6,000 years ago, as at Knap of Howar, Orkney and settlements like Skara Brae. There are also large numbers of chambered tombs and cairns from this era, particularly in the west and north. In the south and east there are earthen barrows, often linked to timber monuments of which only remnants remain. Related structures include bank barrows, cursus monuments, mortuary enclosures and timber halls. From the Bronze Age there are fewer new buildings, but there is evidence of crannogs, roundhouses built on artificial islands and of Clava cairns and the first hillforts. From the Iron Age there is evidence of substantial stone Atlantic roundhouses, which include broch towers, smaller duns. There is also evidence of about 1,000 hillforts in Scotland, most located below the Clyde-Forth line.
Funerary art in Puritan New England encompasses graveyard headstones carved between c. 1640 and the late 18th century by the Puritans, founders of the first American colonies, and their descendants. Early New England puritan funerary art conveys a practical attitude towards 17th-century mortality; death was an ever-present reality of life, and their funerary traditions and grave art provide a unique insight into their views on death. The minimalist artistry of the early headstone designs reflect a religious doctrine, which largely avoided unnecessary decoration or embellishment.
A ledger stone or ledgerstone is an inscribed stone slab usually laid into the floor of a church to commemorate or mark the place of the burial of an important deceased person. The term "ledger" derives from the Middle English words lygger, ligger or leger, themselves derived from the root of the Old English verb liċġan, meaning to lie (down). Ledger stones may also be found as slabs forming the tops of tomb chest monuments.
St Boniface's Church, Papa Westray is a historic church and graveyard located on the island of Papa Westray in Orkney, Scotland. The site of the church dates back to the Iron Age and was possibly used later as a Christian monastery. The present church was built in the 12th century and was remodeled in 1710. A 12th century Norse hogback gravestone lies to the east of the church. Two Pictish cross-slabs were uncovered in the graveyard in the 20th century, and were later moved to museums. Historic Environment Scotland established the site as a scheduled monument in 1959.
Elizabeth "Betty" Cameron Willsher MBE, was an early years child psychologist and educationalist, lecturer, children’s author, historian, preservationist and noted Scottish Gravestones researcher, recorder, authority and writer.