views of Edinburgh, Holyrood, Arthur’s Seat and the Firth of Forth. William Henry Playfair was commissioned to design a National Monument to honour the Scots killed in the Napoleonic Wars and, in keeping with the fashion for Classical architecture that characterized the Enlightenment, he came up with an impressive recreation of the Athens Parthenon, entirely fitting for ‘the Athens of the North’. Building work commenced in 1822, then the money ran out. Just twelve columns stand today, towering over the city.
Over in Glasgow, John Strang developed the GlasgowNecropolis. Opened in 1832, on a hillside like its predecessors, the Necropolis was designed to be non-denominational. It soon became like Westminster Abbey, supplying the final resting-place of Glasgow worthies from the 1830s to the 1870s.
The trend towards rural cemeteries spread to America. In Boston, New England, the authorities faced similar problems of overcrowded burial grounds. One difference was that in America, developers were free to build straight over graveyards, driven to do so by an ever-burgeoning population. Epidemics brought many burial grounds to the same pestiferous condition as their British counterparts, which led to the trend to bury out of town. There was another dimension: rapid urban growth, population mobility, booming business and commercial ventures, aggregations of surplus wealth, concentrations of educated and public-spirited people, revisions of religious doctrines and Romantic affectation–all combined to create a context in which the rural cemetery was a logical alternative to the burial places of an earlier era. Rural cemetery promoters wanted to change the image of the disgusting burial grounds of the past, and create peaceful retreats.
Established in 1831, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first rural cemetery in America, and it set an example to the rest of America and to Europe, too. Landscape gardeners planned its layout around the natural contours of the site, with lazily meandering roads winding round already established tall shady trees. Mount Auburn became a sanctuary where mourners could commune with nature and their dead were buried with dignity within its spacious acres. It became such a popular destination that it led directly to the development of public parks. The City Fathers, somewhat perturbed to find citizens walking dogs and riding horses among the graves, agitated for more green spaces where the populace could promenade on sunny afternoons. 18
Meanwhile, back in London, Victorian planners dreamed up bizarre and fantastic schemes to deal with the city’s dead.
The influence of Père Lachaise was deeply felt. Architect FrancisGoodwin, responding to ‘the prevention of the danger and inconvenience of burying the dead within the metropolis’ designed a massive, 150-acre Neo-classical cemetery to be situated in north London, in Primrose Hill, or in south London, near Shooter’s Hill. The plans included a 42-acre special section, a sort of British pantheon for ‘the very wealthy and great and distinguished persons whose wisdom, bravery, genius and talent have conspicuously contributed to the glory of the county’. Enclosed by a double cloister through which visitors could promenade in wet weather, it featured facsimiles of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins at the Roman Forum and the Athenian Acropolis. Four figures, representing the Tower of the Winds in Athens were to stand at each corner of the cloister. There was to be a replica of Trajan’s Column, the 30-metre-high monument to the Roman Emperor, dating from the first century AD , and catacombs. Outside this inner sanctum a secondary area, laid out like Père Lachaise, would cater for the middle classes, with the ‘humbler class’ of folk situated at a remove. Investors willing to buy into this grandiose proposal were offered 16,000 shares at £25 each.
Thomas Willson proposed a huge pyramid for Primrose Hill. At an estimated
Over in Glasgow, John Strang developed the GlasgowNecropolis. Opened in 1832, on a hillside like its predecessors, the Necropolis was designed to be non-denominational. It soon became like Westminster Abbey, supplying the final resting-place of Glasgow worthies from the 1830s to the 1870s.
The trend towards rural cemeteries spread to America. In Boston, New England, the authorities faced similar problems of overcrowded burial grounds. One difference was that in America, developers were free to build straight over graveyards, driven to do so by an ever-burgeoning population. Epidemics brought many burial grounds to the same pestiferous condition as their British counterparts, which led to the trend to bury out of town. There was another dimension: rapid urban growth, population mobility, booming business and commercial ventures, aggregations of surplus wealth, concentrations of educated and public-spirited people, revisions of religious doctrines and Romantic affectation–all combined to create a context in which the rural cemetery was a logical alternative to the burial places of an earlier era. Rural cemetery promoters wanted to change the image of the disgusting burial grounds of the past, and create peaceful retreats.
Established in 1831, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first rural cemetery in America, and it set an example to the rest of America and to Europe, too. Landscape gardeners planned its layout around the natural contours of the site, with lazily meandering roads winding round already established tall shady trees. Mount Auburn became a sanctuary where mourners could commune with nature and their dead were buried with dignity within its spacious acres. It became such a popular destination that it led directly to the development of public parks. The City Fathers, somewhat perturbed to find citizens walking dogs and riding horses among the graves, agitated for more green spaces where the populace could promenade on sunny afternoons. 18
Meanwhile, back in London, Victorian planners dreamed up bizarre and fantastic schemes to deal with the city’s dead.
The influence of Père Lachaise was deeply felt. Architect FrancisGoodwin, responding to ‘the prevention of the danger and inconvenience of burying the dead within the metropolis’ designed a massive, 150-acre Neo-classical cemetery to be situated in north London, in Primrose Hill, or in south London, near Shooter’s Hill. The plans included a 42-acre special section, a sort of British pantheon for ‘the very wealthy and great and distinguished persons whose wisdom, bravery, genius and talent have conspicuously contributed to the glory of the county’. Enclosed by a double cloister through which visitors could promenade in wet weather, it featured facsimiles of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins at the Roman Forum and the Athenian Acropolis. Four figures, representing the Tower of the Winds in Athens were to stand at each corner of the cloister. There was to be a replica of Trajan’s Column, the 30-metre-high monument to the Roman Emperor, dating from the first century AD , and catacombs. Outside this inner sanctum a secondary area, laid out like Père Lachaise, would cater for the middle classes, with the ‘humbler class’ of folk situated at a remove. Investors willing to buy into this grandiose proposal were offered 16,000 shares at £25 each.
Thomas Willson proposed a huge pyramid for Primrose Hill. At an estimated
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