Calton Hill Cemetery

Edinburgh is a very interesting city and with it being just a short 25-minute train journey from our home in Dunbar we do spend a lot of time exploring Scotland's capital.  

On of my favourite spots is the Old Calton Burying Ground at the foot of Calton Hill.  Many of Scotland's leading citizens of the 18th and 19th centuries are buried here and the brooding sandstone and granite structures make for great photographic subject.

I was in Edinburgh yesterday evening and had 30 minutes to spare while waiting at Waverley Train Station, so I walked to the cemetery, which is just 5-minutes from the station.  The weather was typically Scottish - overcast and slight drizzle which later turned to rain.  However the diffused light was almost perfect for the type of mono images I wanted to capture.

The graves and mausoleums are in some state of disrepair and the 'well worn look of decay' was exactly the feeling I wanted to portray in the set of images I captured on the Fujifilm X100.  The fixed 23mm f2 lens is perfect for this quick-fire type of project, I had to find the images that suited the wide angle lens rather than having two or three lens and finding the lens that suited the subject.  A single lens makes me think more and I find the challenge invigorating.

The reason I like photograph in cemeteries is the sense of history that is attached to each headstone or plaque.  These were real people but who were they? How did they live their lives?  What was it like living in Edinburgh 200 years ago? 

I find places like Calton Hill very peaceful and the one certainty in life is that we are all going to end up in a place like it.

Here are some more images in and around Calton Hill Cemetery including the monument to David Hulme, the great Scottish Philosopher and Historian, whose statue stands on the Royal Mile. 

Also below is the one of the few statue's to Abraham Lincoln outside of America and is a memorial to the Scottish soldiers who fought in the American Civil War.  More information on this monument is available on the blog I wrote HERE.

There are also memorials to people who would've long been forgotten but for the inscriptions chiselled into stone.  My eyes fell on one particular memorial to Major Archibald Argyle Campbell, an officer of the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment who died in Plymouth in 1809 after the distinguishing himself at the battle of Corunna in the Peninsula War against the French.

I did a quick Google search and found a portrait of Major Campbell HERE and a transcript of the memorial HERE.  Without this 200 year old stone tablet tucked away in a corner of Calton Hill Cemetery no one would probably remember Major Archibald Argyle Campbell today.  This is why I consider churchyards and cemeteries as a door to forgotten history. 

All images taken on a Fujifilm X100 with a fixed 23mm f2 lens.

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