Scotiana » Monuments

Glasgow Necropolis: A Monument to ‘Child Migrants’…

MAJA — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:21:05 +0000

Here fond affection

rears its sculpted stone…

(from John Henry Alexander’s epitaph – Glasgow Necropolis)

“CEMETERIES ARE FOR THE LIVING. Sure, the dead are the permanent residents and the living merely visitors but the Necropolis and every other burying ground in the world were imagined, designed and built for the benefit of other living people. Time, as we are always reminded in graveyards, marches on and one generation of living people is replaced by another, over and over, time without end, amen.”

(Death by Design – The True Story of the Glasgow Necropolis – Ronnie Scott )

………………………….

Hi everybody!

It’s always with much anticipation that I’m waiting for a new post by Janice or a new ‘Letter from Scotland’ by Iain and Margaret . In her last post, Janice mentioned an article she had just read in Celtic Life , a popular Nova Scotia magazine which aims “to celebrate the living culture of the Seven Celtic Nations (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Galicia in Spain and the Isle of Man), to “share the culture, traditions, history, music, books, art, stories and language of all Celtic people.” The article is entitled ‘Child Slaves From Scotland; A Story rarely told‘ . The very name of this article conjured up a lot of unforgettable memories which brought me back instantly to Glasgow Necropolis, in front of a monument erected in memoriam of the unhappy children who came to be called “Child Migrants”. When we discovered the monument, quite by chance I must say, our first thought was that it was the grave of a much beloved child and it’s only on reading a board nearby that we learned the sad fate of those unfortunate children to which it is dedicated.

At the end of a grey and rainy day, on August 2007, we had been haunting the alleys of the “silent city”, as Ronnie Scott calls the Necropolis in his very interesting little book Death by Design. This strange city counts no less than 50,000 residents, a figure which would suggest a great density of population and much noise on the ‘Grey Rock’ if we didn’t know that its inhabitants aren’t taking much place and that they aren’t making much noise… or at least that’s what we’re expecting from them !

With this post, I’m introducing a series of articles about Scottish graveyards. It had not escaped to me, when we were planning our first visit to Scotland, in 2000, that we would find there some of the most ‘romantic’ churchyards we would ever see. In their silent and peaceful atmosphere, just try to decipher what the old stones have to say. Each of them has its secrets and stories to tell, some graves are true works of art and poetry, others read like pages of history and you will find expressed on many of them a unique and irresistible kind of humour… finally, in this realm of death what we discover is a quite astonishing celebration of life…

Always a dog in the neighbourhood … no Greyfriar’s Bobby in the Necropolis but we’ve met a friend anyway. So dogs seem to be welcome here. No wonder, it’s a magnificent park to take a walk and, up the ‘Grey Rock’, you can get a magnificent panoramic view of Glasgow and the whole area, if the weather is fine, of course!

We discovered Glasgow Necropolis on the very first day of our arrival in Scotland, in June 2000, and quite by chance I must say, after a short visit to the cathedral had left us very frustrated (closing time at 5.30 ) but we did not regret our walk in the solitary and labyrinthine city of the dead (the Necropolis is open from 7.00 till dusk daily). Our first trip to Scotland did not last long but it began in Glasgow and though we only stayed two days there, we could visit a number of very interesting places (Kelvingrove Art and Museum – the old Glasgow Transport Museum – St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art with Dali’s famous “Christ of St John of the Cross” - Glasgow Cathedral). We immediately loved the big city even if when we arrived a cold and wintry atmosphere made it rather gloomy after a sunny departure from Bordeaux. In 2000, our aim was to go as far as Bettyhill in the north of Scotland and as we intended to visit a number of places on the road there was not much time left for Glasgow and still less for Edinburgh which we finally did not visit on this first trip.

In 2006 and 2007, when Janice joined us in our Scotland travelling journeys, our interest for Scottish funerary art expanded since she was looking for her Scottish ancestors and consequently we visited a number of graveyards all around Scotland.

Death by Design, The True Story of the Glasgow Necropolis - Ronnie Scott - Black & White Publishing 2005 front cover

To visit the Necropolis is to travel back in time, to dip into the Victorian world-view, where the heroes or robber barons (take your pick) of capitalism and the winners and losers of various religious disputes rub shoulders with long-forgotten poets and novelists. It provides a powerful sense of the transience of all things, the fads and fashions that pass into the mists of time, like the Clyde shipyards, the locomotives makers, the shipping lines and the importers of sugar, tea, tobacco and rum.

(Death by Design – The True Story of the Glasgow Necropolis – Ronnie Scott)

This very interesting and well-written little book of 122 pages is illustrated and we find in it a few remarkable epitaphs.

“Modelled on Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the Glasgow Necropolis first opened for burial in 1832 and has been a haunt for cemetery tourists ever since. Dominated by its memorial obelisk to John Knox, the Necropolis is a living testament to Victorian funerary excesses and the nineteenth century’s obsession with death, sometimes referred to as the Cult of the Dead. Here, Ronnie Scott surveys the architecture of the Necropolis’s monuments, graves and mausoleums and the architects who built them. And he also tells the stories of the folk who inhabit the Necropolis or City of the Dead, as the word necropolis translates. Unlike Pere Lachaise, the Necropolis in Glasgow may not be able to boast of being the last resting place of anyone quite as famous as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison or Edith Piaf but it does have its share of celebrity corpses. By the middle of nineteenth century, anyone who was anyone in Glasgow was buried there or had a Necropolis monument erected to their memory. The designer of the Royal Yacht Britannia, industrialists like Charles Tennent and Lord Kelvin, a Polish freedom fighter, they’re all here and all have their own interesting stories – as do some of the rather less well-respected occupants, such as the professor of anatomy who encouraged body-snatching. The architecture of the tombs, gravestones and memorials is as varied as the lives the citizens of the Necropolis led – and sometimes just as flamboyant. The men, such as Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, who designed Glasgow’s city-centre buildings during the period when it was second only to London in terms of prosperity also had a hand in creating the Necropolis and their life stories are covered here too.

Ronnie Scott is a cemetery historian who has spent four years researching the Glasgow Necropolis for his PhD thesis. He regularly leads guided tours of the Necropolis and gives presentations on cemetery development and body-snatching.”

(Source: Amazon)

Here’s the contents:

Introduction

Building the Silent City
Pure Dead Brilliant
On the Tourist Trail
History Set in Stone
Making a Grand Exit
From the Cemetery to the Nursery
The Bodysnatcher and the Brewer
It’s All Greek to Me
Ascending Towards Heaven
The Clyde Built Men
From Common Graves to the Royal Yacht
All Human Life is Here
The Words and the Stones

A Short Glossary

What Some of the Symbols Mean

Glagow Necropolis Heritage Trail - Glasgow City Council leaflet

We visited the Necropolis in 2000, 2001 and 2007 and the place was never the same. In 2007, we stayed longer there as if we wanted to miss no grave, no inscription, no symbol. At the entrance, we had been given a very interesting leaflet with a detailed map in it and it proved quite useful to us. We were probably the last people to leave the Necropolis that day and we were quite surprised to see that cars were patrolling the park (the park is patrolled regularly by the Ranger Service) and we were asked several times if all was right with us. We would soon appreciate that reassuring presence for, as time was passing, we began to feel unsafe as if a vague danger was looming, not coming from the dead but from the living for at this late hour we began to meet strange people, and to feel that we were followed..

For sure, next time we’ll join a guided visit… and why not a ghost walk I think I’ve found a guide who doesn’t lack panache ! We’ll certainly book a tour of the Necropolis with this noble mousquetaire in the very atmospheric video below!

At the end of our visit of the Necropolis we fell on the Child Migrants monument. It was not mentioned on our leaflet and we had not seen it on our previous visits of the Necropolis. At first, we thought it was a child’s grave for it was surrounded by teddy bears and all sorts of colourful and fluffy toys but it was not, as we soon learned on the nearby board.

This poignant monument is dedicated to the British children who were sent to other commonwealth countries, known as the « child migrants ».

Inscribed on the monument, in golden letters, is a quotation from Isaiah 49-15:

“I will not forget you…

Glasgow Necropolis 'Child Migrants' monument detail - 'In the palm of my hand' © 2007 Scotiana

I have held you in the palm of my hand” …

Has not this child on the engraving a little air of Saint Exupéry’s ‘Petit Prince’ ?

Little presents, full of tenderness and symbolizing childhood, have been laid by anonymous visitors in front of the monument…

… showing that there are still people who want to know and not to forget…

Below is the story of these children as we discovered it on the weatherbeaten board, nearby the monument.

It reads:

(…) Many children left in homes, due to broken marriages or family pressures, were shipped overseas.

The reasons behind the scheme were practical. It helped populate the Commonwealth with white children and it relieved Britain of the burden of looking after them. At the time the organisations involved also thought that the children were likely to have a better life abroad.

Classified as orphans, although the majority were not, many children were often sent away without the knowledge of parents or relatives and were denied details of their family. Brothers and sisters were separated and some children faced appaling conditions in large institutions or were forced to work for long hours and little pay.

Rose Kruger, a former child migrant, met her sister for the first time in 50 years in 1997. She was one of group of 40 women who returned to Britain to be reunited with lost family members or just to visit the country they once called home.

Rose was deported when she was 11 years old. She lived in a Catholic orphanage in Scotland and one day was told she was going on holiday. Her sister, who was three years older, did not know where Rose had been sent until nine years ago.

The trip, which the 40 former child migrants dubbed “the sentimental journey”, was partially funded by Catholic charities and the Australian Child Migrant Foundation.

The Catholic Church now acknowledges that in many cases the migrant policy had a “profoundly adverse effect” on the children. Many of the organisations like Barnados and the Salvation Army, which originally sent the children overseas, now try to help reunite former child migrants with relatives, wherever possible.

The Child Migrants Trust.

Glasgow Necropolis The children Britain did not want article photo © 2007 Scotiana

Thirty years after Britain stopped sending its children overseas to other commonwealth countries, an investigation gets underway into the practice. It follows a legal battle by what become known as the ‘child migrants’

More than 130,000 children were ‘exorted’, over a period of more than 100 years. The practice was only stopped in 1967. Many of those who were migrants themselves say it had a devastating effect on their lives.

A Health Committe inquiry, which opens on Wednesday, is to hear evidence from people who, as children, were deported to Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the former Rhodesia.

The Commons inquiry will try to establish how the British Government should help former child migrants «come to terms with their childhood experience and establish contact with their surviving relations in the U. » . One of the questions it will be considering is whether they are entitled to any form of compensation.

(BBC News)

We were all deeply moved by this story and stayed silent for a long moment in front of the monument. Then we passed along the Garden of Roses , crossed the Bridge of Sighs and found ourselves again in the big busy city of Glasgow where there is still so much to discover …

Bye bye doggy friend…

A bientôt chers lecteurs.

Mairiuna.

Meet Sherlock Holmes at Picardy Place, Edinburgh

MAJA — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:49:36 +0000

Sherlock Holmes Statue - Picardy Place - Edinburgh

We’re almost there Mairiuna, only a few feet away from Picardy Place where the more than life-size bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes is standing close to the house (No 11) where his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle was born.

Sculpted and cast by Gerald Ogilvie Laing at Kinkell Castle in Sutherland in 1989, it is today one of Edinburgh landmarks.

The most famous fictional detective is portrayed in meditation on the death of his author. Inscribed on his pipe, we can read these words: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe“.

This quotation refers to Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe in the book ” The Treachery of Images “ under which he wrote: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” ( This is not a pipe ) which in fact is true because it is an image of a pipe.

Hey! Look down Mairiuna, there is an enormous footprint at the base of the statue. I bet you it’s that of the Hound of the Baskerville.

To finance the project of the statue many activities were undertaken. One of them was a ticketed amateur boxing match in a pub. I wonder if the event took place in the Conan Doyle pub across the street from the statue?

The Conan Doyle Pub - Edinburgh

Up to Calton Hill with Robert Louis Stevenson !

MAJA — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:03:41 +0000

Calton Hill stairs 2007

The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great elevation which the town embraces (…)You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock to find yourself in a field of monuments. (Robert Louis Stevenson – Edinburgh Picturesque Notes - 1878 )

I’m coming Janice ! Didn’t you say Calton Hill was 333 feet high ? that’s about 100 metres and there is a staircase to begin with, a family walk actually and worth the effort if the weather is fine. We’ll have to climb a little more than that if we want to get to the top of Arthur’s Seat. The famous volcanic rock which dominates the city is 823 feet high, that is about 251 m (who said I was bad in mathematics !) … not a Munro anyway nor even a Corbett[1] … but up Calton Hill for now…

R.L.Stevenson "Edinburgh Picturesque Notes" illustration

I’ve taken with me my old illustrated edition of Edinburgh Picturesque Notes. No better guide to visit the place than Stevenson. Born in Edinburgh in 1850, he knew pretty well his native town. Some of the Calton monuments must have been quite new at the time he used to walk up there to see the town from above. Let us see what he wrote about the place … Oups ! mind the step !

Calton Hill Nelson Monument 2007

What’s that ? A big tower has just emerged in front of me which looks like a lighthouse. If we hadn’t seen what kind of construction Stevenson’s family has built all along the Scottish coast I would have wondered why Stevenson did not use himself such a comparison to describe Nelson Monument instead of comparing it to a telescope or a butterchurn ! This monument seems to have been built to celebrate Nelson’s victory against Napoleon , at Trafalgar in 1805. But let us go ahead, there seems to be other monuments in the area!

Calton Hill Commemorative & Nelson Monuments 2007

All these [monuments] are scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep…

No more sheep today but many people resting on the grass or strolling around the place. The weather is fine. The melancholy accents of a violin are rising in the air together with the more cheerful notes of a guitar… Oh ! here’s Janice, sitting in front of that monument which looks like the Greek Parthenon. No wonder Edinburgh has often been called “The Athens of the North”. Hi, Janice ! could you tell us more about that place ?

[1] Munro : 3000 feet (914 m) – Corbett : between 2500 feet and 3000 feet (between 762 m and 914 m)

Hall of Scottish Heroes – Wallace National Monument

MAJA — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:45:12 +0000

The National Wallace Memorial Tower

Wow….Mairiuna…it was worth the wait ! That sword is indeed very impressive…I would not have liked to be pierced through by it…yikes!

Not less impressive is Wallace Monument. You can see it from far afield, standing on the summit of Abbey Craig, when you visit the region. Designed by John T Rochhead it took 8 years to complete it. The foundation stone was laid in 1861, on Bannockburn Day, but the opening only took place in 1869, on the 11 september, the anniversary date of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

The victorian gothic style highly ornate tower is 220 feet high. Notice, when approaching it, the “crown steeple” and the statue of knight with its sword raised.

A stunning monument and a mythic place too !!! It is said that this is where Wallace, together with Sir Andrew Moray, rallied his band of fighters on September 11, 1297, fought and defeated the army of King Edward I of England in the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

Those who have stamina enough can climb the 242 steps which lead to a platform, named The

The National Wallace Monument

Crown. From there, they will get breathtaking views of the underlying city of Stirling and of seven very very important battlefields : Cambuskenneth (9th century), where Kenneth MacAlpin “made” Scotland; Wallace’s Stirling Bridge and Falkirk; Bannockburn, Sauchieburn, Sheriffmuir, and Falkirk (1746).

The weather was very wintry the day when we visited the monument and Jean-Claude was the only one to climb up to the top where he took many photos. Both of us gladly managed to ascend, through the narrow spiral staircase of the Memorial Tower, the 135 steps which lead up to the Scottish Hall of Heroes, on the second level.

Hall of Scottish Heroes

I spent a lot of time in this room filled with fine marble busts sculptures of Scottish well known heroes and really enjoyed reading about the donors and unveilers. For our records, I will list them underneath:

* Sir David Brewster (1781 – 1868), scientist and inventor.

* Robert the Bruce (1274 – 1329), King of Scotland and national hero.

* George Buchanan (1506 – 1582), historian and scholar.

* Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), poet.

* Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881), writer and sage.

* Thomas Chalmers(1780 – 1847), preacher and writer.

Stained Glass - Sir William Wallace

* William Ewart Gladstone (1809 – 1898), politician and UK prime minister.

* John Knox (1505 – 1572), religious reformer.

* David Livingstone (1813 – 1873), missionary and explorer.

* Hugh Miller (1802 – 1856), writer and geologist.

* William Murdock (1754-1839), pioneer of gas lighting.

* Allan Ramsay (1685 – 1758), poet and man of letters.

* Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832), writer, poet and nationalist.

* Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), economist and philosopher.

* Robert Tannahill (1774 – 1810), songwriter.

* James Watt (1736-1819), inventor and developer of the steam engine.

These sculptures are the work of D.W. Stevenson, R.S.A. Was he related with Robert Louis Stevenson?

A series of 11 beautiful stained-glass windows are to be found in the different levels of the Monument. In the Hall of Heroes, I stayed a long moment in front of the one representing Wallace leaning on his sword. He is wearing a helmet ornated with a dragon, or is it a basilisk ?

We stayed a long time in Wallace Monument. Maybe the weather will be better next time and we’ll feel like climbing up to the top. In the meantime, let’s ask JC to show us some of the photos he took from up there…