Memorializing the dead

We love cemeteries, even if we know no-one in them! To family historians we sometimes find the key information not available any-where else. Information like that about 18th century Twohill families in Kill-Saint-Ann, when Irish deaths were not recorded systematically.

Another fascinating aspect of cemeteries, and let’s be clear, I mean headstones, is the variety of heart rendering or heart felt tributes to the dead. And the changing trends or fashions of headstone decoration, and what added information these images can convey.

How sad that there are no headstones for the Buchan family. Here are some of the beautiful and interesting headstones and wall plaques to be found in Newbattle Churchyard.

A table like tombstone now nestling under a dense tree.

The figure below is on one of the legs of the table. It is the best preserved figure, perhaps being most protected by the tree.

No names remain.

Is this the ancestral Buchan home?

 When I travelled to Newlandrig, on the day I came down with Covid, I was probably missing the subtle clues about the landscape and the built environment. Helen was driving me around the locations associated with Robert Buchan b1813. Most of these places are significant for many other Buchan descendants. 

The Buchans were in Newlandrig by 1808, when an infant son died and was buried in Newbattle Churchyard. They were there in the 1921 census, barely. We drove along the Dalkeith Bypass (A68) to turn off onto Main St (B6372). Soon after the turnoff was Dewarton, and I really can't remember it, where the Buchans lived from about 1800-1804.

Newlandrig is half way between Pathead and Gorebridge. It is about 10 minutes drive from Dalkeith, and perhaps 20 minutes from Edinburgh by car. Being tucked in the middle of a rural landscape, only a minor road passes anywhere near it. However it is a pretty place, with wide open fields on either side, and patches of dense trees that evoke mystery, intrigue and shady-ness!

 Like many Scottish hamlets and villages built anywhere from 1700-early 1800s, houses are arrayed on each side of an existing road (or track). It is likely that Newlandrig began this way along a track between Gorebridge and Pathead. Rev Cluney notes in 1790 that Newlandrig is one of the ancient villages, and I believe this as you'll see below.

In 1841 it had about 20 dwellings which were arranged along this same 'modern' road. In 2024 there were still about the same 20 dwellings placed along each side of the road. Farmland stretched out on either side.

Lets enter it.

Welcome to Newlandrig, I walked carefully!  

Helen sent me this image last year, after I asked her to take some photos, and you can see any street on google maps.

But nothing beats walking along each side of the street, peering closely at details on the houses and then stepping back for a wider  vista.

And there are locals to talk to; well there was one local resident weeding her front garden. We did speak though.

 

Greenness abounds

But it is the variety of small scale architecture which is so appealing: Oh why was I coming down with Covid when I could have knocked on so many doors - 'The Old School House' in the image bottom right above, and some of the clearly more ancient dwellings. But all seem to have been re-roofed, modern windows installed and a general air of comfort was obvious. How different it might have been 200 years ago.

A range of dwellings of the 20 or so buildings

The entire village was owned by David McKinlay of 25 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh in 1855. Oddly enough the village of Newlandrig in 1841 was called  Newlandburn in the 1851 census, and in 1855 it was known as 'Newlandtown'. The name then reverts to Newlandrig thereafter. This threw me for a while before realising that they all referred to the same place.

The 1855 Valuation rolls record nine renters' names in Newlandrig, and a group of "19 houses at Newlandtown each under 4 pounds of yearly value...[tenanted by] sundry tenants." One renter was James Whyte in Newlandburn House and Farm - the rather ornate building with the bright blue gates above. It's rent is 50 pounds per year. It is clearly a large farm at the western end of the hamlet with a wide acreage beyond. Similarly what was once the village dairy is a large farm at the eastern end of the hamlet, on the same northern side.

Mr Alex Johnston is renting a house and offices at 12 pounds per year, Mr John Ruthven the baker a bakehouse at 9 pound per year, Mr John Bertram is renting the Schoolhouse at 5 pounds per year (also to be seen above).

James Buchan, bachelor patriarch of the Buchan clan for most of the 19th century, is probably not renting the large house shown below, that for a while I had imagined must be theirs. But I am determined to find out who was in this place*. James Buchan, noted as 'Forrester, Vogrie [Estate]' is renting a 'House and Byre' for 4 pounds 10 shillings. Other 'dwelling houses' are rented to named folk: Janet Low, grocer, James Mill gardener, George Buchan quarrier (James' brother relocated from Dewarton to be in Newlandrig for the 1851 census) and Mrs Aitchison - all rents being 4 pounds per year.

* If the Johnston family of Newlandrig turn out to be Jean Johnston's family, then this lovely old house is still in the family. 

 

A family together in Newbattle Churchyard

 Robert was 74 years old when a wagon struck him at eight o’clock in the morning on a winters day in January 1887. He died instantly. His wife would learn quickly of his death as his body was returned home immediately to Newtongrange, a mining village less than half a mile from the colliery. 

Certainly a doctor was required to certify the cause of death, it being an accident. Two days later he was interred in the Newbattle Churchyard, now known as the Old Newbattle Cemetery. 

Scotland has a system called Register of Corrected Entries (RCE). 

Since 1855, all death certificates are issued  following a declaration by a medical doctor. This is the system we have in Australia. The death must be registered within 8 days. If the registration is delayed by the need for an investigation, then it will often generate an RCE. 

RCE are also created about sudden and violent deaths for the same reason. As well they are created for divorces, and any significant change about a birth as well. Often not much more is learned about the death, and newspapers often provide a greater amount of detail.

I have often wondered whether the mines ever compensated men who died at work, and whether this occurred for single accidents in contrast to ‘mass casualties’. Did someone pay for their funeral, and a headstone? Was Robert a pauper, sharing a common grave? After nearly 150 years how could we know? See my separate post about later recognition of deaths in mining, and sometimes name Robert and his relatives who also died in the mines.

Finding where he is buried in Newbattle Churchyard has given me some comfort. He was married in the church from which he was buried. That was in 1847, 40 years earlier. His wife and many of his children lived within a mile or two, and I expect would have been there.

Helen outside the front of the now-closed Newbattle Church of Scotland. The wooden door was very old and very thick.

The church was built of stones taken from the Newbattle Abbey destroyed by English forces in 1544. Initially a church was built a short distance away, but it was unsafe. In 1720 it was decided to build a third church, again using the stones, funded by the Marquis of Lothian and costing £4,000. It was open by 1729. In 1851 two new galleries were built for the new populations of Esbank (ritzy) and Newtongrange (mining village, see post).

Another extension occurred in 1875.

Interestingly, the nearby cemetery is surrounded by stone walls nearly 12 feet high, but these have tapered to the small walls seen here in front of the church at the road.

Robert was buried one plot away from his eldest brother James who had died just over three years earlier in late 1883. Bachelor James as head of the household, had lived in Newlandrig almost all of his 84 years, possibly in the same house. He took over the role of forrester to James Dewar of Vogrie Estate after his father died in 1818, and in 1855 was renting the third most costly house in the village. James died of senile decay, nursed by his youngest sister Helen, who also never married. 

Helen was the next sibling to be buried in the plot containing James. Having lived nearly her entire life in James’ home this seems fitting, and I hope they got on well. She died in Sushie Brae House in Borthwick Parish in 1894. Did she lose tenancy of the home in Newlandrig after James’ death? Something for me to research.

The siblings’ nephew, another Robert Buchan, died in 1896 and he was buried with his uncle Robert. He was the son of another sibling, George Buchan. He was 64 when he died of chronic dyspepsia and general exhaustion, exhaustion brought on by mining.

Soon after followed Robert’s wife Margaret Ireland in 1898. As a widow she had moved from the mining village of Newtongrange to Hight St, Dalkeith. I might have walked passed her home but was not clued into the number. Living with her were the two bachelors, a nephew and her grandson with Robert. She was buried in the plot with James and Helen, not her husband. Was this because his plot already held his parents, although this is not recorded? She died at the age of 75 from heart disease and general asthenia or weakness.

Then another Margaret, the wife of nephew Robert, was buried in a plot next to Robert the elder. She had moved to Edinburgh after her husband’s death in 1896, perhaps to live with a married daughter. Once again she was not buried in the same plot as her husband, and no-one else is listed in this grave site.

Finally Robert’s daughter Isabella Murray was buried in the plot next to him in 1915.

A list in a book is now the record of a family together.

When I visited the churchyard on Day 2 it was wild, unkept and wet and the grass was often over my knees. When I went back the next day with Cousin Helen, it was in the process of being mowed by a man on a largish ride-on mower, and a man with a whipper-snipper. They had not yet reached this part of the cemetery. So all my warnings to Helen were still a little bit needed. It was lovely to see that the churchyard had not been abandoned at all!

This is the approximately Section 7 of the cemetery, where the Buchan family have been laid to rest. 

This section at the rear had not yet been mowed.

How it looked on Day 2 and why I sensed it was somewhat neglected. I was struck by the 10 feet high stone walls (not literally), and the mass of trees around it. The churchyard is now about 300m away from the church, with these same dense trees between them.

Robert lies among family, reunited with siblings James and Helen, wife Margaret and nephew Robert and his wife Margaret, and his daughter Isabella.

An intriguing possibility. Within these four grave plots are several people named Brown, as well as a two day old infant named Buchan. One of these Browns, a name not connected to us as far as I know, is called Jane McCree Brown. Remember my search for Janet McRae? And that an ancestor of one of my McRae cluster matches is Jane McCree, to me a new variant spelling that I had not checked before (so my search term ‘m*ra’ would not have found it).

Jane was a 15 month child from Hunterfield who died in 1889. Knowing the propensity in Scotland to include a full name of someone when naming a wee baby, could this be my Janet McRae? Or some-one related to her?