Burke & Hare! for those of you that are not aware of the dubious characters burke and hare, see here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders but in a nutshell, they were two navvies who helped build the canal, after it it opened they used their digging and cutting skills to excavate dead bodies from local graveyards on the system, and sell them onto the medical fraternity for science.....now having a means of easy and direct transport access to the university hospital at Edinburgh....ie the canal. the cadder church graveyard was one such place frequented by this pair, in time the church authority decided on appropriate action, the open coffin you see here is made of metal, which would have had a locked lid, whereupon the recently deceased would be resting in here prior to full burial. the small hut was built to house a guard and as you can see it benefits from having a fireplace to keep the guards warm.....this is probably where the term "the graveyard shift" came from....those guarding the graveyards from grave robbers. the next pic shows a very substantial iron work cage, which inside contains the grave of someone, probably quite high up in the cadder church, unfortunately there was too much organic material inside and on the gravestone to make a proper reading. obviously his/her family did not want the likes of burke and hare nicking off with their nearest and dearest. the final pic although nothing to do with burke and hare, i have seen these before and always thought them to be stonemasons marks, to either identify the stonemason...for payment, or a mark to dictate were the stone had to be laid.....tis neither they are ordnance survey level marks, and the mark indicates were the level marker tool has to be placed now and in the future.....more info here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(surveying)
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:46:43 +0000
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