Every night, at the same time, a man would make his way up the spiral staircase, check it was 8.15pm, and ring the bell. The sound of the bell meant you had 15 minutes exactly to leave, because at 8.30pm, the great iron gates would be closed and that was that. If you weren’t out by that time, you were staying the night. And there aren’t many people who want to stay the night in a cemetery.
It’s different now. The bell is gone, and the gatehouse that contained it is neglected and decayed. Not only is the roof in danger of collapse, the spiral staircase has rotted away, and there’s a real concern the building might not last much longer. The iron gates are also gone, which means you can come and go as you please. Mostly, it’s the relatives of the dead who come, or locals who enjoy a huge green space in the middle of the Gorbals. But it can also bring trouble.
The small team of volunteers at the Southern Necropolis do what they can. They’ve campaigned to raise money to save the gatehouse, which was designed by the same man who designed Park Circus, Charles Wilson. And when the vandals and troublemakers do strike, the volunteers move in and tidy up, pick up the litter and so on. One time, someone drove right into the graveyard, probably on a quad bike, and churned up the ground round Greek Thomson’s grave. It can be depressing, this kind of thing: the lack of respect.
There are similar problems in Glasgow’s other cemeteries and graveyards – damage, troublemakers, vandals – but I’m pleased to say there are signs of hope. In the north of the city, at the great burial site that contains the Western Necropolis, St Kentigerns Roman Catholic cemetery and Lambhill graveyard, incidents of trouble are down 73% in a year. In 2023, the police were called 38 times about the graveyard and attended 15 incidents. But in 2024, the police were called 10 times and attended five incidents.
Why has this happened? Because there’s been an outbreak of common sense, that’s why. A year ago Glasgow City Council decided to shut the gates at the entrance every night in an attempt to prevent trouble. It hasn’t solved the problems completely – since the new measures, there have still been incidents including public nuisance, an abandoned vehicle, and a theft. But the trend is downwards and on the whole the local community is pleased. Local councillor Robert Mooney says it gives people peace of mind to know their loved ones’ graves won’t be damaged or disrespected.
The peace of mind is not total though, and the culprits aren’t always the local neds. You may remember the stushie last year when Glasgow City Council started slapping stickers on certain gravestones headed “Warning! this memorial has failed to meet safety standards.” The council said it was doing it because it had a statutory duty to ensure headstones were safe but that maintenance was a matter for the owners, usually relatives. Applying the notices to the stones, said the council, was an effective way to find the relatives and get the repairs done. Most other people said it was disrespectful.
Both stories – the gates being shut at Lambhill and the stickers being slapped on stones deemed unsafe – help to demonstrate what’s going on here: the slow neglect of graveyards. I’ve been in lots of them over the years doing various stories and it’s always moving. I was in Old Monkland cemetery when work began to exhume a site they thought might contain the body of missing Moira Anderson. I was in Ardrossan when they were looking for the bodies of the victims of the HMS Dasher disaster. And I was in Sighthill graveyard to see stones finally being erected on the unmarked graves of soldiers. As I say, it’s always moving, but it can be depressing as well to see how far many of our cemeteries have been allowed to decline.
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Perhaps some of it is an inevitable consequence of secularisation: if the importance of the church has declined in our lives, and our deaths, then so will the importance of our graveyards. But graveyards and cemeteries are for the alive as well as the dead: the team at the Southern Necropolis for example put on music events, and yoga, and lots of other stuff. In some parts of the country, a graveyard can also be the only sizeable green space that’s available, to walk, or relax, or exercise the dog. That’s why it was mind-boggling to see the suggestion in Edinburgh last year that dogs should be banned from cemeteries – in the city of Greyfriars Bobby! Wisely, the council rejected the idea.
The question is what we can do if many graveyards are being neglected and are in decline, which they are. The Scottish Government recently ran a consultation on the management of graveyards, and we’re yet to see how they will officially respond to it, but the noises are not encouraging. There’s a suggestion for example that the in-perpetuity rights to lairs will be replaced with a single generation of 25 years, which is no time at all. Many families, including my own, visit graves for far longer than that.
The possible changes to the powers of local authorities are also worrying. The Government’s stated aim is to modernise – always a dangerous word – the legislation that covers burial. This could mean granting a local authority powers to “carry out any activities they deem necessary”, which sounds like the sort of vague legal language that’s got us into trouble in the past. Whatever was done would be hard to oppose or prevent because it was “deemed necessary”.
What’s actually needed is better management of graveyards overall. Sadly, we’re not going back to the days when a man in a uniform would climb to the top of a tower, ring a bell, and make sure the gates were closed every night. But making sure the gates are locked is an effective, and inexpensive, deterrent, and what’s been happening up at Lambhill cemetery proves that it works.
There are other effective steps we can take. For instance: while Glasgow Council has been slapping stickers around their cemeteries, Edinburgh Council has embraced the idea of rebuilding and restabilising their gravestones through the Community Payback Programme. They’ve trained staff to supervise but most of the work is done by people serving a community sentence so the cost is minimal – just the materials basically: some concrete, steel rods and so on. Hundreds of stones have been rebuilt or strengthened in this way for very little cost.
If we’re honest, it’s solutions like that, community payback, that’ll work best here because governments aren’t about to spend lots of money on graveyards (the dead don’t have votes). But a balance has to be struck between requiring councils to take reasonable steps to protect cemeteries – lock the gates! – and protecting graveyards from inappropriate decisions. Giving councils the power to do whatever they deem necessary will makes things worse. What will make things better is requiring them to come up with a plan to maintain graveyards to a reasonable standard: a plan that works, a plan that doesn’t cost too much, and a plan that’s decent.
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