Watching Brief

Date April 2005

Event ID 1084943

Category Recording

Type Watching Brief

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1084943

NS 7922 9377 A watching brief was undertaken in April 2005 at the Mar Lodge Cemetery during remedial work following a wall collapse. These works followed a programme of test trenching in January and February 2005 under the supervision of Lorna Main (Stirling Council). The test pits indicated a significant spread of random skeletal material to depths below 2m, with no obvious intact burials.

The area to be investigated comprised the site of an old roadside tenement, believed to have been partly demolished in the last quarter of the 19th century, and the ruins of which have been incorporated into the Mar Lodge Cemetery. The building appears to have been destroyed by the process of demolishing the roadside wall to gain entry, and subsequently gutting the interior, leaving only the N, W and S exterior walls standing. A new roadside wall was then constructed and the empty interior backfilled with a thick deposit of graveyard-derived debris. The position of the tenement is now represented by a raised platform of soil and debris, 3.5m above both the local street level to the E and the gardens of the Valley Lodge to the N. This new surface over the tenement ruins is possibly the same level as the tenement garden on the W side of the ruin and is certainly equivalent to the cemetery ground surface.

Further excavation revealed more human remains, but no intact burials. For the most part, only the dominant forms comprising long bones, pelvises and skulls were present. The minor bones were possibly left in situ, or perhaps the rest of the bones lie elsewhere in the main infill deposit.

The structures uncovered or further exposed by these works consisted of parts of the two remaining tenement walls to the N and W, as well as the new roadside wall to the E and the large garden N side revetting wall.

D Stewart 2005

Sponsor: Historic Scotland

Kirkdale Archaeology