RAIN AND REMEMBRANCE IN ROSEBANK CEMETERY
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.
Rosebank Cemetery
ROSEBANK ANGEL’S LOCAL LINKS
The photograph shown here of a ‘winter angel’, posted on Twitter at the weekend, prompted some interest among readers.
ROSEBANK PHONE MAST TO MOVE
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.
SAD NEWS FROM ROSEBANK
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.
REMEMBERING THE ‘STORMY PETREL’
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:
SHIPWRECK ON AUSTRALIAN COAST
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.
PURRY OLD BURIAL
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.
PROFILE: LAURENCE JAMES NICOLSON, THE 'BARD OF THULE' (1844–1901)
In Rosebank Cemetery, an inscription ends:
SERENE HE SLEEPS
WHOSE SONGS OF LOVE AND HOME