Airth North Churchyard
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Airth North Churchyard Airth North Churchyard Geoff B Bailey Illus 1: Airth North Churchyard looking north. Contents: The New Churchyard The People Resurrectionists Inventory of Stones Index of Names Bibliography Falkirk Local History Society Page 1 Airth North Churchyard The New Churchyard By the end of the 18th century the occupants of Airth Castle had been keen to close the old parish church and graveyard that lay adjacent to their residence for some considerable time. Its closure, it was felt, would allow the public road there to be diverted. It was only in January 1816 that a new site for the church was selected at the north end of Airth and it was noted that the ground was “suitable for a churchyard as it may be dug without hitting rock or water” (National Library of Scotland Ms 10893). The burial ground was created immediately upon the work of construction of the new parish church beginning in 1817. It took some three years to complete the building which opened in 1820. Graham Stirling of Airth Castle provided some monetary incentives and encouraged the move to the new burial ground by active participation (see family graveyards). The Airth archive contains a list of people to whom lairs were given in the new churchyard at Airth in exchange for those they had in the old churchyard beside the castle. Those marked with an asterisk were known as “strangers,” that is to say people then living outside of the parish. The first entry was for 28 November 1817. 1817 James Adamson 3 lairs 1818 William Drysdale 2 Alexander Carlaw * 2 William Taylor * 2 1819 Allan Gilmour 1 1820 Andrew Nelson 2 James Watt 2 William Buchan 2 James Hunter 2 1821 Alexander Turnbull 2 Joseph Kirkwood * 1 John Neale 2 Janet Allan 4 William Espie 2 1822 James Cumming * 3 Alexander Cumming 4 Andrew Stewart 3 Thomas Hardie 2 Alexander Manuel 3 1823 James Club 2 Alexander Archibald * 2 John Nicholl 2 John Malcolm 7 Malcolm Boyd 3 Rev James Somerville * 1824 Robert Morton/James Watt 3 James Cowan (1822) 1 George Ritchie * 2 Falkirk Local History Society Page 2 Airth North Churchyard James Penman 2 William Borrowman 2 William Cowan 2 Andrew Hunter (1822) 2 William Neish 2 Alexander McLellan 2 John Miller * 2 1824 James Bell 3 John Dunn 2 Alexander Ballantyne 3 1825 James Brag * 2 Thomas Walker 3 William Cowan 2 John Taylor * (1822) 2 John Fish (1821) 2 Charles McArthur * (1821) 3 1826 John Simpson 2 Widow Henderson (1822) 1 John Gow * (1825) 1 Robert Jaffray (1825) 2 (National Library of Scotland, Ms 10893/264-8) In many cases the families transferred the old gravestone to the new burial ground, though it is unlikely that the bodies were moved as was the case with the Graham family itself. There are numerous stones dating to before 1817 in the new churchyard, including: YEAR INVENTORY SURNAME NUMBER 1773 81 1781 101 McCulloch 1793 149 Wall 1794 14 Gilfillan 1794 20 Bruce 1800 25 Kemp 1800 216 Steel 1805 171 Hardie 1809 241 Sharp 1813 230 Hardie The earliest stone in the churchyard dates to 1713 and is a small thick ovoid shape in the local sandstone (195), typical of that period. It is not surprising to see that it features an anchor with a set of initials set to either side. Illus 2: Stone 195. Some stones may also have been re-used by thinning them and inscribing new letters. This seems to have been the Falkirk Local History Society Page 3 Airth North Churchyard case with some of the long headstones which stretch across adjacent lairs. They appear to have been flat stones brought from the earlier churchyard and stuck upright along their long sides. Similar sized head stones are found at the Broompark Church in Denny, but there they are of a finer sandstone and are later. One of the new stones in the new churchyard specifically mentions that Elizabeth Coubrough had died in June 1813 and was buried in the old churchyard (No. 119). When her husband died in July 1836 he too was interred there. The burial ground at the new church was bounded on the north-east by the main road and here a retaining wall was built along the boundary and spoil from terracing the building was dumped against it to increase the depth of soil for burials. To the south-west there was a steep hill slope leading up to the older road and so this limited the available width of the churchyard. The north-west and south-east boundaries of the churchyard were as they are now, with the area to the south being the more extensive. The ground was laid out in regular rows following the contours of the land and lairs were made available throughout from the very beginning. The stones placed against the road bounding the road naturally had their inscriptions facing inward towards the graveyard, but all of the remainder faced the road, or rather the main access route. The fresh start meant that the lairs were regularly shaped and a plan allowed their new owners to be easily identified. However, as time went on these plots changed hands, often in informal agreements, and after half a century the situation had become confused. As with the old churchyard, the families with rights to bury only leased the ground from the Heritors and did not own it outright and inevitably disputes arose. A good example of this occurred in 1902 when Mrs Heugh, the widow of James Heugh, Airth, brought a case against the Heritors of the parish. Eight lairs had originally been allotted to the Bauld and Cuthrie families and were acquired by James Heugh (No 151). As a courtesy Heugh allowed Alex Scott, farmer at North Greens, to bury one of his children in the plots. However, Scott then gave permission for Marshall to bury one of his children there. Mrs Heugh asked for the burial to be removed and for the Heritors to reinforce her exclusive right of sepulchre. They refused to do so and the court found that Mrs Heugh could not prove her claim. Falkirk Local History Society Page 4 Airth North Churchyard Illus 3: Extract from the 1862 Ordnance Survey Map (National Library of Scotland). Although the churchyard was only opened in the second decade of the 19th century is was already full by the end of that century. Its overcrowded condition was drawn to the attention of the Heritors and the local authorities as early as 1892 by the minister, Rev Leckie, though the chance of the Heritors doing much about it was unlikely as they knew that responsibility was soon to be transferred to the Eastern District Committee of the County Council. Leckie pointed out that at the beginning of that year two bodies had been interred only two feet below the surface of the ground, and that on representations by him the bodies had been taken out and the graves made deeper. This had not been the first instance of such shallow burials and Leckie stated that complaints had been made of “effluvia in the summer time arising from the churchyard” (Falkirk Herald 14 May 1892, 4). By then there was no slack in the system and in common with other parishes in Scotland the Heritors resorted to legal means to recover unused lairs. In October 1905 advertisements in newspapers brought to light that there were 43 claims for rights to lairs by people living outside of the parish and these were rejected. At the same time Alexander Black CE Falkirk was asked to examine the ground to the south-west for a proposed extension to the graveyard but he noted that the clayey nature, to the depth of five feet, made it unsuitable. In May the following year the Airth heritors requested the Parish Council to close the churchyard at Airth and to provide a new cemetery. In April 1926 the Parochial Council was still recommending the closure of the churchyard under the Burial Ground (Scotland) Act, but it was not until February 1948 that an official application was made. By then it had been decided to make the previously rejected extension up the hill to the south-west which, being secular, is a cemetery rather than a churchyard. Falkirk Local History Society Page 5 Airth North Churchyard Illus 4: Ordnance Survey Map of 1959 showing the new Cemetery Extension to the south. At some point, presumably when the graveyard was extended, some of the gravestones from the churchyard were used in the retaining wall on the south side of the road leading up the hill from the mercat cross to the main entrance to the cemetery. Most are fragmentary, but one is complete and reads: “1823/ JH JR.” Illus 5: Gravestone in the Retaining Wall beside the road leading to the Cemetery. The People Airth is a maritime parish and so it is not surprising to see this reflected in the graveyard by the number of people employed in the merchant marine and also by deaths by drowning. Until the mid 18th century ships had been built within 100m of the new church and a large number of vessels were registered at Airth. However, with the increase in the size of ships and the land reclamations from the Forth, trade moved to Grangemouth. The Duncanson family of shipbuilders moved to Dalgrain on the River Carron. Some of the sailors also made the move but many remained and made the short trip to the new port to board their ships.