Stuart Robertson wrote: > Margaret, > > Some of the graves are overgrown and headstones have been toppled > over but with a bit of luck it should be possible to locate the > headstone which should detail all the family members interred > there... > > Stuart Robertson Nairn, Scotland Much of that toppling of headstones was quite deliberate policy on the part of Edinburgh City Council. See what's said on the lower part of this page: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/10/12_edinburgh_today_-_warriston_cemetery_gravestones.htm The gravestone of my mother and father suffered the same fate in another Edinburgh cemetery though I very much doubt if it was seriously insecure. Admittedly it might possibly have fallen on a determined hooligan who was trying to push it over, but I don't believe it would simply have collapsed onto some innocent infant who might have been toddling past. The Council failed to contact us or the funeral director who had carried out the last interment a few years earlier, and the only way we knew was that my brother found out about it on visiting the cemetery. At first, because many stones had been flattened, he thought there had been a mass attack by vandals, and in a way he wasn't far wrong. It cost us around £650 (about US $1100) to have the stone re-erected. I wasn't impressed, and it seemed an absurd overreaction on the part of the Council. The council here in south-west Scotland seemed to be proposing a similar policy, even in ancient graveyards, but fortunately they seem to have abandoned their plans for such barbarism. I don't think it's happened in any of the Orkney graveyards.* Norman Tulloch *Unsubtle attempt to bring the topic of the post back to Orkney.
I am willing to take Norman's suggestion to get back to Orkney, but would like to continue off list on Edinburgh cemeteries where former Longhope, Walls, Orkney residents might be buried. If anyone would like to continue this thread away from the Orkney group, please contact me at mvanauker@hughes.net. (However, I will be away on business Sunday-Tuesday). I have another question: Was there anything happening in the Orkneys - economic, political, etc. - that might have made several generations of a family decide to leave the Orkneys for Edinburgh? Margaret VanAuker