Morningside Cemetery

The cemetery was soon enveloped by the city and now lies between Balcarres Street (to its north) and Morningside Drive (to its south). Its original entrance was very grand. This was off Belhaven Terrace to the east. However, although the entrance gates and railings still exist, this route is now blocked, a modern housing development, Belhaven Place, standing over the graveyard, in defiance of cemetery legislation. This is not the sole loss of ground: Balcarres Court has been built to the north-west; Morningside Court to the south-west; and numerous blocks have been added along most of Morningside Drive. This leaves the cemetery detached from its surroundings, hard to access, and seriously…

The overall layout is broadly rectilinear but with a slight curve on its east–west axis. There is a general drop in ground levels from south to north giving an overall form of a shallow amphitheatre. Apart from a central avenue of trees on the main east–west path the landscape is undramatic and unstructured, and lacks the atmosphere of its predecessors, such as Dean Cemetery. The overall distribution of stones is spartan, especially towards the north. Larger monuments tend to lie to the south-west. One section lies almost detached, to the south-east, accessed through a pathway between the modern housing developments, isolated as an ignoble peninsula. The local Morningside Library has an…