Oldest Gravestone

This is probably the oldest gravestone in West Linton graveyard, at least I think so and I'm so at home there now that I'm pretty sure this is the case. There are only the initials to show who is buried here and as you can see they are GP and AH (husband and wife, no doubt). The date is 1667. Sheila A. Scott's book Peeblesshire Monumental Inscriptions-pre 1850 doesn't provide any further information. The few letters I can see beneath the initials read The End to me but that might be my fanciful imagination!!

She describes the gravestone as crudely carved but I think the date and initals are beautifully done. Perhaps she refers to the other side of the stone (seen below) that show a very rudimentary skull and crossbones.

John Allan

John Allan has a remarkable gravestone in West Linton graveyard. He's buried very close to the side wall to the right if you enter from the Main street and towards the back near the wall separating the graveyard from the Lower Green.

The inscription is very hard to read, only an occasional word can now be traced and I have Sheila A. Scott's book Peeblesshire Monumental Inscriptions - pre-1855 to thank for the text. Once I consulted the book I could even deciper some of the text on the stone. She doesn' mention the date of the gravestone but by closely looking at it I could see the year 1798.

The gravestone belongs to John Allan Leat Col (which is Colonel) Master in Collie Burn. This probably means he was in charge at Coalyburn Mine, which is the open cast mine the remnants of which can still be seen in our neighbouring field. The nearest house to ours is in fact called Coalyburn, so this gravestone is of very local interest.

His gravestones is adorned with this wonderful compass rose

as well as this circle of instruments which include (again according to Sheila Scott) 2 picks, a shovel, hammer and a couple of wedges, no doubt the tools of his trade.

This is the reverse of his gravestone with pillars, a winged (although the wings are hard to distinguish) soul and crossbones. There was also text on this side, now sadly lost to us. A detail of the top of this side can be seen at the very top of this post and became my blip for today!

James Melrose and Bessie Purdie

I spend the morning in West Linton Graveyard where I now feel very much at home. But despite that I still haven't seen all the gravestones in detail and today I discovered this very old stone, dating back to 1707 and decorated beautifully with symbols of mortality such as skull, crossbones and Memento Mori text. Also on the other side of the stone, the pillars at the side (think "theatre of life"), as well as the winged soul at the top of this side, a symbol of immortality.

On the other side of the stone is the actual information about who was buried here. And to make it extra clear what the occupation of James Melrose was there is a carved shoemaker's knife at the top of the gravestone The text on this gravestone is now barely legible and I have Sheila A Scott's book Peeblesshire Monumental Inscriptions pre 1855 to thank for the additional information on the text that no longer could be read.

Here it is:

I M

B P

1707

Hear lyes

James Melrose

shoemaker

...........died.... 1709

and also Bessie

Purdie his spouse

who died 11th Sept 1725 (??)

aged 79 (?)

There are more words and they look as if they were added at a later date but try as I may, I can't make any sense of them.

Skull and crossbones

Not one specific grave today but simply a view in West Linton graveyard which caught my eye today as I was wandering around photographing graves and writing down what I can read of the engraved text for this blog.

John stayed in the car while I clambered around, handbag over my shoulder, umbrella clutched in my hand, notebook in my other hand while trying to decipher and then write down the text on various stones. All this while the rain came streaming down, it was dark, damp and very, very wet underfoot. I kept slipping and losing my footing (crocs really weren't the right thing to wear today!) and still I enjoyed myself hugely.

I feel so at home in this graveyard now, the gravestones are becoming old, familiar friends and it gives me a lot of satisfaction that I'm capturing their images and text for posterity on this blog. Perhaps I'm becoming just that little bit (or maybe very!) weird in my more mature days here on earth.

William Cairns and family

The text on this richly decorated stone reads:

Here lyes

William Cairns

son to Robert Cairns who

died the XV of

may 1723 years

and of his age

the....??.....year

And on the other side of the stone there is more text. It reads as follows:

Sacred

to

the memory of

James Stevenson, Roadmaker

who died Nov 9

1795

Isobel Mitchell his spouse

and James Christian and Isobel (??, and educated guess, it could also say Isorit?)

their children also.

And further down:

James Stevenson mason

and

Margaret Stevenson

Their children are interned

here.

This stone is positioned next to the fallen stone shown here, of James Cairns. I'm not sure how James Stevenson is related to them.

John Porteous' Gravestone

I have become more and more interested in graveyards but am too busy at the moment to become involved in any organized registrations so as are done for various graveyards all over Scotland by volunteers. So I have it in my head to go and gradually photograph every gravestone in my local graveyard, West Linton, as well as making a note of the text on them as far as it's still readable. Just to record what is left while it's still possible to see most of the inscriptions. It's already too late for some of the tombs.

This one was randomly chosen to be the first, mainly because it concerns a previous inhabitant of Macbiehill, where we live now.

It reads:

Here lies John Porteous, mason, son to George Porteous, in Macbiehill, who dyed the 21 of July 1784, aged 27 years.

The name Porteous still has many entries in the local telephone book, so definitely a local family. Does anyone still visit John, or remember him? Did he make gravestones in his job as mason? And did he foresee when he made them, how soon it would be time for someone else to make his gravestone? I won't ever know the answers to any of those questions, but for a brief moment in time this morning I did think of John, who was born in 1757, and remembered him.

My interest in graveyards bloomed when I started to blip. Blipfoto is a site where you can upload one picture for every day, provided that picture is taken on the day you upload it too. Here is my page on Blipfoto. You can see my latest picture in the sidebar of this blog as well. I started going to neighbouring graveyards and then discovered that the one in West Linton, my nearest one, had many fascinating tombstones of it's own. Hence this new project. I hope one day to have all the gravestones there featured here, on this blog.