In wet conditions yesterday, local resident David Harrison led a tour of Rosebank Cemetery to look at some of the graves there erected and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
There are 273 individuals dating from the First World War remembered here, their deaths occurring between the start of hostilities in 1914 and the formal conclusion on completion of peace treaties after 1918 (the so-called dates of responsibility).
The photograph shown here of a ‘winter angel’, posted on Twitter at the weekend, prompted some interest among readers.
Several got in touch to ask what high-profile personage had been commemorated by such a substantial, beautiful, and expensive piece of sculpture.
The answers are surprising, for, despite occupying one of the most prestigious plots in Rosebank Cemetery, those remembered here came from comparatively humble origins.
The angel stands scattering flowers over the grave of David Bremner and Elizabeth Henderson.
Good news!
Readers will remember our report in late November about the 18.5m telecommunications mast newly installed on Broughton Road.
The siting had caused upset among many locals who felt its positioning next to the Gretna Rail Disaster memorial in Rosebank Cemetery was unsightly and disrespectful.
One doesn’t expect happy news from a cemetery, so none of what follows should come as a particular surprise.
These researches are not intended to be intrusively morbid. They have been made in reaction to gravestone inscriptions in Rosebank Cemetery which were surely intended by relatives to trigger memory or spark interest among future generations.
In that sense, these short and melancholy stories constitute polite responses to long-standing invitations.
The Great Storm of 14 October 1881 claimed the lives of 189 men, most of them fishermen from Eyemouth (129) and Burnmouth (24), but 17 originating from Newhaven.
Three of those Newhaven men are remembered on adjacent gravestones in Rosebank Cemetery:
LOCAL MAN'S LAST HOURS RECALLED
A long wander about Rosebank Cemetery yesterday, and an unexpected glimpse of tempest and terror on the far side of the world.
Able Seaman John Paterson was one of 27 crew who sailed from Lamlash on Arran on 3 May 1894. Under the command of Captain William Leggat, the three-masted steel barque Cambus Wallace was on her maiden voyage, bound for Brisbane with a cargo of whisky, beer, pig iron, salt, fancy goods and explosives.
This is rather sweet.
A somewhat eroded stone cat sits patiently on its companion's grave ... not so much Greyfriars Bobby as Rosebank Moggie.
We noticed it the week before last whilst preparing for Saturday's Quintinshill (Gretna) Commemoration.
It may have something to do with Peter Wishart, an Associate of the Royal Society of Artists whose details appear last on the headstone below.
In Rosebank Cemetery, an inscription ends:
SERENE HE SLEEPS
WHOSE SONGS OF LOVE AND HOME
HAVE OFTEN CHEERED US ON THE WORLD’S HIGHWAY;
AND HERE WE LEAVE HIM – WHILE WE ONWARD ROAM –
TO WAIT THE DAWNING OF AN AMPLER DAY.
Here is ‘da last noost’ (winter berth) of Laurence James Nicolson, a native of Lerwick born on 26 April 1844. The youngest of four children born to Shetland parents (his father was a dealer in spirits and malt liquors), he was educated locally before leaving for the mainland.