As you stand at this cemetery’s gate, south of the old city of Edinburgh, you are at the ridge of the ancient Burgh Muir. Here, from the earliest times to the Jacobites, were common grazings and the haunts of vagrants. Kings hunted over the moor and its forests, and assembled armies there. By 1513, enclosed by its FloddenWall, Edinburgh could only expand upwards. Overcrowding increased and so eyes and minds turned to the north and, based on James Craig’s plan, the new town was growing, across the Nor Loch, by the turn of the 18th Century.

In 1753, Edinburgh’s urban population was about 48,000 and this had increased to just over 90,000 by1801, the year of the first official census. In 1851 the population of Edinburgh exceeded 200,000. Even at the start of the 19th Century, the city’s old churchyards, all in heavily populated neighbourhoods, and some having been extended more than once, were more than full. Often bad maintenance, and tombs with encircling protection against body-snatchers, allowed filth to pile up. To meet the problems, private companies made cemeteries near the then outer limits of Edinburgh. Five cemeteries were opened from 1843 to 1846, and the largest, the Southern or Grange Cemetery, owned by the Edinburgh Southern Cemetery Company, was able to receive its first interment, that of Dr Thomas Chalmers, in June 1847.