subject: Scottish Cemetery Memorials from Past Centuries [print this page] Scottish Cemetery Memorials from Past Centuries
By the early 17th century, many traditional cemeteries had become distended with so many bodies that their lands were familiar as funeral grounds. Some sites have been subject to an increase of a couple of feet tall. By the middle of the century, we start to see more identification marks on the stones. Heraldic devices, craft tools, symbols of mortality and the name, date-of-birth and regularly the address of the dead started to be crammed onto the limited surfaces of the stone. One side of the cemetery headstone was devoted to written identification while the other was to be utilized for symbolic expression. The symbolical elements would customarily uncloak the man's occupation while reminding the living spectator that she or he too must depart this earth eventually. Maybe the most aspiring period of Headstone carving. Indeed, it was this century the normal cemetery headstone came to be used as standard. One fact that marks the Lowland Scottish Headstone as unique is that the Grave marker took about a century to penetrate into the highlands, where the older slab and table grave markers were still being used till a little before the 19th century. The height of eighteenth century Scottish Lowland Gravestones can be anywhere between sixty cm and a hundred cm. Also 100% unique to the Scottish Lowland gravestone are the materials.
Sandstone is a simply carved but simply weathered rock although it was used as the standard gravestone material in the north of Britain. In the south, where marbles and granite were the chosen medium, we see a comprehensible hesitation on the part of the stonemason to excessively decorate the hard stones of Britain . Eighteenth century Scottish Gravestones are nearly always orientated east to west. The part which has the identification of the corpse customarily faces towards the Holy Land.
Since most eighteenth century were left comparatively naked, the rear side of stone was often left unmarked. This is the side that usually faced away from the Holy Land, towards the west. Nevertheless in several lowland cemeteries, the side sometimes left unmarked is covered with lavish designs. In the mid eighteenth century, workman, workers and renter farmers found themselves in a period of wealth. A result of this was the rise in carefully inscribed gravestones for the common folks. 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 advent of the Iron Grave Marker would simply add yet one more embellishment to an already ornamental art form.
