You have inspired some thoughts. Is there recorded anywhere who commissioned the most recent engraving of a stone? Is there a consecrated ground law somewhere that those buried in the same grave must be or are related? Janet ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gordon Johnson" <gordon@kinhelp.co.uk> | ** Stone 262 in the Peterculter M.I. book (compiled by me, sold by | ANESFHS) says: | To the memory of Alexander Ritchie shoemaker died Culter 2 Dec 1891 aged | 80; son Alex. died 1858 aged 21; dau. Helen died 1862 aged 26; dau. | Agnes died 1864 aged 24; son James died 1866 aged 20; son William died | 1867 aged 25; his first wife Margaret Adam died 1868 aged 54; 2nd wife | Joan Grant died 1932 aged 92; their son John died 1934 aged 59, both | buried in New Zealand; son Robert died 1950 aged 74 buried in New | Zealand. Erected by his widow and surviving sons. | There are several other Ritchies mentioned on stones, including a | Margaret Ritchie who married a David Ross, and mention on the same stone | of James and Margaret Lindsay. | Gordon Johnson.

Janet wrote: >You have inspired some thoughts. > I cannot see any reply to this message so I will put in my tuppence-worth. >Is there recorded anywhere who commissioned the most recent engraving of a stone? > Quite possibly not - although the position may vary according to where the stone is and how long ago any addition or alteration was made. Burial in the ancient parish burial grounds was not, generally-speaking, a highly organised matter. To start with, the layout of the graves is often chaotic: in the Kirkyard of Banchory-Devenick, whose MIs have recently been published, it looks as if there were at least three independent and incompatible ground-plans (possibly in the heads of successive gravediggers) which collide in the middle of the burial ground, so how anyone knew where anyone was buried is a mystery. That said, families did tend to bury their dead close by each other, but the choice of burial-place and decisions as to what stones should be erected, and what should appear on them, was probably governed by custom, rather than anything more formal. In the non-denominational (and generally commercially-operated) cemeteries which came into use from the mid-19th century, matters were rather more formal. The entire ground was, from the outset, mapped out and divided into numbered plots (or "lairs"), and the normal mechanism was for a family or an individual to purchase a lair or lairs for the use of himself and his family. I recently came into possession of a Lair Certificate (with accompanying regulations) for Trinity Cemetery, Aberdeen. This records the sale, in 1904, of a "Class 4" lair, and the regulations are very detailed. Regarding gravestones or other memorials, it is stated that "... no Monument, Tablet, Inscription, Enclosure, Erection, Tree, Shrub, Vault, or building of any kind will be permitted until a drawing and specification of what is proposed have been submitted to and approved by the Master of the Trades Hospital* or his factor." The original parish burial grounds came under the control and responsibility of the then County Councils around 1929, and they brought in a degree of discipline to the management of the burial grounds - although exactly how rigorous this management was I suspect varied, with strict rules more likely to be applied in big urban burial grounds than in small rural ones. The urban ones generally had ornate "lodges" at one or more of the cemetery gates, and the employess who resided there would no doubt have enforced the rules. But this was less likely in the countryside. >Is there a consecrated ground law somewhere that those buried in the same grave must be or are related? > > There is, to the Kirk of Scotland, no such thing as "consecrated ground", and the later Cemeteries were specifically non-denominational. So no, there is no law stating who may or may not be buried in any given grave. In the case of the Trinity Cemetery lair I mentioned above, no burial could be carried out unless the person organising the burial produced the certificate showing them to be the owner of the lair, but if they chose to give room to somone not related to them, they had the perfect right so to do. And you do occasionally, in the Memorial Inscriptions, find cases where grand families were graciously pleased to host the corpse of a long-lived servant in their burial ground. I have also seen some of the Lair Records for another of the Aberdeen Cemeteries, and from this, it would appear that, in cases where a lair had been purchased some time previously, but no interments had taken place in it, the Cemetery authorities were not above using the lair for the burial of paupers. Gavin Bell * an officer of tne "Incoporated Trades" of Aberdeen, who owned the burial ground.