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Thomas Edward gravestone
General view of Banff Cemetery

There are two graveyards in Banff, the old one down by the sea, and the new one up on the hill. St Mary’s Kirkyard, round the ruins of the old parish church, is very historic, and the Banff Preservation and Heritage Society has brought out books listing and describing the graves. But for a long time now, the people of Banff have been buried in Banff Cemetery up on the hill.

The old kirkyard was overfull. There were too many visible bones. In Victorian Scotland it was clear that cemeteries should be spacious, well-drained, preferably windswept, outside the town, and discreetly expressing a well-ordered society. Along the avenues would be the conspicuous tombs of the great and the good, and in behind rows of smaller gravestones, and away in a corner somewhere for those who didn’t have gravestones at all. Banff got the whole package. “It is more than 5 acres in extent, and is laid out with great taste. The cost of the whole has been about £2700”. The newspaper had a plan of the layout, but admitted that in order to fit in with the shape of newspaper columns, they had made the triangle to the north a rectangle, and that might be misleading.

The first interment in the new cemetery was on 24th July 1862. That did not mean the old kirkyard was closed. After all widows might expect to be buried with their husbands, and so on. After the novelty wore off, rather too many preferred the old familiar place. There was a worry that the old kirkyard would become a slum, like some of the buildings around it, and in 1867 Miss Strachan of Cortes gave £50 for new railings for the old kirkyard. She herself was buried there, in one of the grandest Victorian monuments in the old kirkyard. The Victorians were really willing to spend money on graveyard monuments, and the new cemetery has some very fine stones.

Kirkyards, as the name tells us, used to be around churches. Cemeteries are not. Scotland was divided religiously, and no one church had a right to the cemetery. When in 1862, the Bishop of Aberdeen instituted a new Rector in St Andrew’s Church in Banff, he and the other clergy present went up the hill and consecrated the new cemetery. Episcopalians like blessing buildings and places. Probably most people thought it could do no harm, but the Free Church was very annoyed. The grave of Thomas Edward, the Banff Naturalist is in Banff Cemetery, and so are the Commonwealth War Graves from the Second World War.