The Necropolis: Mausolea and Funerary Monuments
Date 3 October 2007
Event ID 907396
Category Management
Type Site Management
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/907396
The Necropolis is laid out on similar lines to Pere LaChaise, Paris and was opened May 1833. A major series of mausolea and monuments are dramatically sited on a steep hill overlooking the Cathedral, formed around Thomas Hamilton's statue of John Knox, 1825. (Historic Scotland)
The Necropolis was the third 'hygenic cemetery' in Britain (following Liverpool's St James, 1829 and London's Kendal Green, 1832) The idea of a garden cemetery, following the model of Pere LaChaise in Paris, had been proposed by a number of leading citizens to the Merchant's House in 1828, suggesting their plantation at Fir Park could be utilised for this commercial use.
The burial ground was intended to be interdenominational, and a Jewish burial ground was established on the north west slope in 1830. The following year a competition was held for the layout of the new cemetery. Although architects were initially appointed, instead the Merchant's House decided that a landscape gardener would be best suited to taking the design forward. George Mylne was subsquently appointed first Superintendant of the Necropolis.
Architectural features were professionally designed, as were many of the monuments, all of which would be vetted after 1835 to "prevent the construction of monuments in very bad taste". Proximity to the Knox monument was considered most prestigious, being sought after by leading families even after the extension of the cemetery to the east into a former quarry in 1857, and further east in 1894. (Williamson, Riches & Higgs)
50,000 burials have taken place at the Necropolis and most of 3,500 tombs have been constructed up to 14 feet deep, with stone walls and brick partitions. On the top of the Necropolis, tombs were blasted out of the rockface. The Necropolis contains monuments designed by major architects and sculptors of the time, including Alexander Thomson, Charles Rennie Macintosh and JT Rochead, in every architectural style, created for the prominent and wealthy entrepreneurs of the Second City of the Empire. (Ruth Johnston)
