Author: mctaggartjoseph7

Continuity and Change in Scottish Death and Burial Customs, 1875–2025

This is a research document I prepared for my University Course about Culture and Heritage. I  researched “Continuity and Change in Scottish Death and Burial Customs, 1875–2025”. I used  headstones in cemeteries in Kilbirnie as examples, as well as family stories. There’s pictures in the appendices.

Click Here for the Document

 

 

 

 

Random Old Cemetery PIcs

I was down in Kilbirnie this week and took some random pictures of graves in the  Kilbirnie Cemeteries:

Old Knox Grave behind the kirk. I will add these to the Knox Section.

Francis Cowan – a 20 year old KIlled in a freak accident in the Steel Works

Bell/McKelvie/McTaggart

Crawford Mausoleum

 

McKelvie, Bell, McTaggart
Francis Cowan, 1920
Crawford Mausoleum
Lord and Lady Crawford statues
Robert Knox, Agnes Barclay
Robert Knox, Agnes Barclay
George, Janet, Robert, Hugh Knox
William Knox, Jean Knox
RW Knox Monument
RW Knox Monument

 

William John Glass

This is William John Glass, he was my Great Grandfather. He married Sarah Hay in 1905 and lived in Glengarnock. At the time of marriage he was living at Auchengree,  He had many brothers and sisters and came from a huge family. His parents had emigrated from Northern Ireland in the 1800’s, they were James Glass and Anne Moore from around Bushmills somehwere.

He died in Central Avenue, before it was rebuilt into private houses we know today.  They are buried in KIlbirnie old cemetery in an unmarked grave.

 

Beith Head Street Burial Records 1854-1900

As you might know, there was a Church in Beith, Head Street which became a cinema, Orange Hall and latterly a Boys Brigade Hall, it has/had a cemetery around it.

Records of burials and lair occupancy.

The first half of the booklet contains the names of people who were buried, the second half contains names of people buried in each  lair.

click here to download the booklet as a zip file from archive.org

Beith Auld Kirk pictures

These pictures of the inside and outside of Beith Auld Kirk are very striking.  The first line of pictures show a monument

One version of the story tells me that  this is  a monument which was installed up at Spiers School. After that was demolished in the 70s the monument was removed and placed behind the Kirk in 1985…. in the Kirk yard where you can still see them today. Another person told me these were actually from Gielsland House and are called “the Gielsand marbles”.

If you know the history of these, please let me know.

 

Co-op and School at the Den (Barkip)

The Den was a hamlet on the main road between Beith and Dalry  – it had it’s own school, bank and shops, Episcopal church etc and was demolished in the 1900s.  You can see the pictures above of the Co-op and School which was known as Kersland Barony.

The Den (Barkip) was largely replaced with the Lambert which became known as the Lambar, then langbar and subsequently “corrected” to Longbar by the council. It is easy to see how that could have happened with the number of Northern Irish accents around at that time.

By the way – I’ve moved this site to a now host, corrected the broken links  and moved in existing subscribers.  If you see any problems, let me know.