Cemeteries of Edinburgh

Cemeteries of Edinburgh Sharing stories of the many beautiful cemeteries, kirkyards and graveyards of Edinburgh. Always visited with respect 🍃 ☀️ 🍂 ❄️

Ironically, the only grave in the burial grounds of St Andrews Cathedral not desecrated by music festival-grade security...
26/03/2026

Ironically, the only grave in the burial grounds of St Andrews Cathedral not desecrated by music festival-grade security fencing.

The place is a maze of steel and emblazoned warnings that brings to mind only portaloos.

Awful, awful, awful.

Why not fence off Ben Nevis?

Golfing prodigy Tommy Morris Jnr teeing off on Donald’s head.Tommy’s grave lies in grounds of St Andrews Cathedral: itse...
21/03/2026

Golfing prodigy Tommy Morris Jnr teeing off on Donald’s head.

Tommy’s grave lies in grounds of St Andrews Cathedral: itself just ruins; like Tehran.

St Andrews town centre these days reduced to a cringe refugee camp housing Julia Styles esque American rich girls who simply won’t go home.

All golf shops for visiting daddies.

Time for some Immigration and C—t Enforcement.

Oh, well
20/03/2026

Oh, well

Room to Live
23/08/2025

Room to Live

Too hungover to grapple with part three of ongoing analysis of JK Rowling. It will be about bad poetry, the internet and...
21/08/2025

Too hungover to grapple with part three of ongoing analysis of JK Rowling. It will be about bad poetry, the internet and Jean Brodie.

For today, a picture of the boarded up Elephant House Cafe where Rowling would occasionally write back in the nineties.

Supposedly, she spent more time in Spoon cafe on Nicholson Street.

The Elephant House has been shut for years after a fire and, bizarrely, the owners are still attempting to crowd fund its renovation and “restore the magic”.

The have achieved ÂŁ445 if a ÂŁ150,000 goal.

Their cappuccinos used to cost somewhere in between.

Sadly missed 🫡

Dope-a-zoid of a cat
16/08/2025

Dope-a-zoid of a cat

Gated (or, the Politics of Jo Rowling and Her Attitude to Democracy, Fascism and English Colonialism: Part 2)…Greyfriars...
15/08/2025

Gated (or, the Politics of Jo Rowling and Her Attitude to Democracy, Fascism and English Colonialism: Part 2)…

Greyfriars’ gate, leading to Heriot’s School.

Path once instilled in schoolboys an early notice of life’s fleetingness and the necessity of leaving chiselled mark.

Endowed by jingly-pocketed goldsmith George Heriot, school for “faitherless bairns” is now one of Edinburgh’s myriad English-curricula adhering private schools.

Colonial lighthouse.

Relation to Hogwarts dubious. Has four competing, colour-coded houses.

Fettes College appears more architecturally influential. Also, the name “Dumbledore” is derived from auld English for “bumblebee” and Fettes’ emblem is a beehive.

Regarding Hogwarts, beyond displaying admiration for aristocratic trappings, Rowling’s wizarding school says much about her attitude to her adopted homeland.

“Hogwarts is a real place to me... I’ve always imagined it to be in Scotland... it was never made explicit in the books but the British reader will know that because if you do travel for a day from King’s Cross Station in London and you go north, you end up in Scotland.”

Interesting, setting the world’s most successful books in a place… yet, leaving such uncertainty about that setting.

Scotland isn’t in Potter.

Tartan tat exists, as exemplified by McGonagall’s biscuit tin.

Pride of Portree is a quidditch team.

Alastor “Mad-eye” Moody is assumedly Scottish because he is a ginger radge.

North Sea Oil certainly isn’t mentioned, obviously, only being important to filthy muggles as a means to make rubber ducks.

Harry Potter is a work of Middle-English delusion. This is a land where you jump in a train at King’s Cross – skip Hull, Liverpool and the Scottish central belt – end up by a loch surrounded by other white people.

…and that Caribean lad, Shacklebolt.

Hogwarts: enchanted, gated community; no tourists in Hogsmeade, no “Yes” flags fluttering in its gardens.

NIMBYist fantasy embodied IRL by the English Tories who move to Skye and bemoan how busy the distillery is.  

“The problem with Scotland, is that it’s full of Scots?”

And tourists, also. 

Against the Wall (the Politics of Jo Rowling and Her Attitude to Democracy, Fascism and English Colonialism: Part 1)…Gra...
14/08/2025

Against the Wall (the Politics of Jo Rowling and Her Attitude to Democracy, Fascism and English Colonialism: Part 1)…

Grave from which Rowling took Voldemort’s birthname sits against the Flodden Wall.

Built about Edinburgh after 1513’s Battle of Flodden.

Massive Scots infantry invaded England: got decimated by cavalry. James IV died in fray.

Exemplified by this wall, Scotland wasn’t always ruled from England.

(Obviously, some dispute “English rule” and point to tiny Scotland’s disproportionate allocation of seats in their parliament. They’d ignore that when Scottish Nationalists controlled 56/59 seats, they were shunned in an episode that laid bare the fallacy of seats as agency.)

1999, two years after English expat Jo Rowling published debut novel, a Scottish pseudo-parliament was established in Edinburgh. Reward for voting Tony Blair, it’d no control over foreign policy and was gimmicked to prevent Scottish Nationalist majority.

2011, gimmick failed. Via English largess, Scotland got to vote on English rule.

Media landscape: English-dictated state broadcaster; 26/27 of Scotland’s curiously London-based newspapers also support English rule.

Into this landscape Jo Rowling very publicly became the largest donor to a campaign for English rule dubbed by its own internal memos as “Project Fear”. She gave them £1m.

Not content with financing propaganda, she’d pen the world an open letter declaring Scottish Nationalists “a bit Death Eaterish”.

In doing so, history’s most famous children’s author likened opponents to fascists of her own creation. The same opponents who’d campaigned to afford Scotland’s 16-year-olds a vote.

Death Eaters: believe in blood superiority; openly murderous.

Scottish Nationalists: civic-minded; threw an egg at Jim Murphy one time.

In unadulterated cynicism, purity of Jo’s blood became forever irrelevant.

Every age bracket under 55-65 voted in favour of Scottish Independence.

Jo’s animus dragged her into the basement-dwelling, trollish existence she lives today. SNP’s bullish approach to inclusive Transgender rites incited Jo’s ire and as a TERF she made herself despised by youths across the globe.

“Non omnis moriar”, or, “Not all of me will die”.Just over the wall from where Jo Rowling took the name Tom Riddel(l) is...
13/08/2025

“Non omnis moriar”, or, “Not all of me will die”.

Just over the wall from where Jo Rowling took the name Tom Riddel(l) is this Latin carving…

A snake (like Nagini) coiled around a cup (like Helga Hufflepuff’s).

Horcrux inspiration?

Horcruxes are vessels into which Voldemort deposits pieces of his torn apart soul in order to sustain his life in a fortified, secreted and segmented fashion.

They are created via murder; albeit, Jo Rowling has claimed that there are other cryptic rites involved, too disturbing to be revealed…

Reddit threads are a good way to gauge the way in which Jo Rowlings ongoing, often baffling annotations to her own books are treated.

Like when she talks about wizards magically dispelling their own poos?

Essentially, having constantly “gay baited” fans over Dumbledore and Mandela Effected them over Hermione’s race, Jo is widely regarded as dishonest and untrustworthy.

Regardless, she ongoingly opts for vague liberal sentiment in rewriting her fiction even as she wields GB News appeasing dog whistles on Twitter.

Like Dorian Gray, Jo looks physically well despite deed and reputation. Yet, her Potter books become more deformed and hard to look at…

Tomb of John Bayne of Pitcarlie, 1681……and a brief aside about Death Eaters and real world zealots. Our post about Volde...
12/08/2025

Tomb of John Bayne of Pitcarlie, 1681…

…and a brief aside about Death Eaters and real world zealots.

Our post about Voldemort yesterday shouldn’t be read as a commentary on Gender Politics. This page is a thinly veiled exercise in espousing leftwing politics but we consider Gender Politics anathema to that cause. Particularly, the issue of transgenderism is bewilderingly complex and characterised by trenchant, simple-minded buffoonery on both sides. It’s an issue characterised by confused children and zealous adults. Thus, tread lightly or just s**u.

Yesterday’s post was simply about Jo Rowling being a detached, disingenuous f-nny.

It was the first of what will be a series of probably self-destructive posts about her books, the influence they’ve drawn from Greyfriars Kirkyard snd the mark they’ve left on it.

The takeaway will be that she’s a f-nny, though, and we hate her for reasons not directly grounded in Gender Politics.

The queue to see Voldemort’s grave…In the 1990’s, Jo Rowling appropriated the name Tom Riddel(l) from a gravestone in Gr...
11/08/2025

The queue to see Voldemort’s grave…

In the 1990’s, Jo Rowling appropriated the name Tom Riddel(l) from a gravestone in Greyfriars.

Now, she lives in a mouldering estate on the outskirts of the city, protected by dark entities called Dementors who forcibly gender any unfortunate souls who stray their way.

She hasn’t spoken to Daniel Radcliffe in years and, if they crossed paths, she would probably hug him like Voldemort hugged Draco that time…

Graffiti carved on a tomb in Greyfriars, by a schoolboy from Heriots. Dated 1710.The private school is over the wall fro...
08/08/2025

Graffiti carved on a tomb in Greyfriars, by a schoolboy from Heriots. Dated 1710.

The private school is over the wall from the cemetery and boys used to climb in at night to knock on the door of Bloody McKenzie’s mausoleum.

Address

St Andrews
KY16 9QL

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cemeteries of Edinburgh posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category