New Calton Cemetery

New Calton Burial Ground was built as an overspill and functional replacement to Old Calton Burial Ground and lies half a mile to its east on Regent Road in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the south-east slopes of Calton Hill. On its southern edge it attaches to the north-east edge of the Canongate in the Old Town. It lies on a fairly steep south-facing slope with views to Holyrood Palace, the Scottish Parliament Building and Arthur’s Seat.

Of particular note is the Stevenson family plot, the resting place of several notable members of the family of Robert Louis Stevenson.

It was initially necessitated by the construction of Waterloo Place, which had cut through the Old Calton Burial Ground, requiring an immediate re-interment of the bodies affected. This major engineering exercise took from 1817 to 1820 to complete. Bodies were carefully identified and moved, with their corresponding gravestone, if existing, to the new cemetery. Due to this fairly unusual circumstance a number of stones predate the cemetery but are indeed true markers of those interred. The new cemetery was made far larger than needed simply for the required reburials, and indeed exceeds the area of the entire space occupied by Old Calton Burial Ground as it was seen as a convenient and more open way of accommodating the growing number of dead caused by Edinburgh’s major expansion of the early 19th century.

Both the Old and New Calton burial grounds are not private cemeteries but were burial grounds run by the city, detached from any church or requirement for any given religious belief.

The design task of driving the cut through Old Calton Burial Ground to create Regent Bridge and Waterloo Place was undertaken by Archibald Elliot who died shortly thereafter and is buried in New Calton Burial Ground. The New Calton Burial Ground was laid out by Thomas Bonnar and the design was refined and completed by Thomas Brown.

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Wikipedia