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Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
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Necropolis Lined Up As Tourist Site |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Monday, 06 June 2005 |
Plan for Regenerated Victorian Graveyard to Attract Visitors
June 6, 2005 Glasgow (UK)
SHROUDED in ivy, daubed with graffiti and often left to crumble, Scotland's graveyards seldom receive the treatment afforded to national cultural treasures.
But a move to regenerate one of the country's most wellknown cemeteries could revive interest in their potential as tourist magnets.
Ronnie Scott, a cemetery historian, believes Glasgow Necropolis, one of Britain's first major secular graveyards, could rival attractions such as the Edinburgh Vaults in popularity.
As chairman of the newlyformed Friends of the Necropolis, Mr Scott is leading an effort to regenerate the site and renew public interest in its forgotten monuments.
An application for lottery funding to upgrade the Necropolis by Glasgow City Council is in the pipeline but has not yet been finalised.
The Necropolis has been hailed as one of the city's most important Victorian monuments by architects and archaeologists.
However, Mr Scott - whose book on the Necropolis, Death by Design, is published later this month - argued for a shift away from regarding cemeteries as archaeological sites in need of restoration.
"My argument would be that cemeteries are symbols of death and decay, " he said. "By denying that, by making them some kind of pristine architectural sculpture park, you're denying one of the core aspects of what they're about. If people only think of cemeteries as stone monuments then they're always going to be thinking about restoration.
"My approach is about thinking of cemeteries as landscapes which you would preserve in the same way as a battlefield or country estate."
Among the treasures hidden in the City of the Dead, as the name translates from ancient Greek, are a headstone by Charles Rennie Mackintosh - reputed to be his first commission - and a monument to John Knox, the Reformation leader.
The graveyard was established in 1833 and modelled on the Pere Lachaise in Paris, which is rated as the city's second biggest tourist attraction after the Eiffel Tower.
It was given to Glasgow Corporation in the 1960s and is home to some of the city's leading industrial figures.
But it has been subjected to repeated vandalism and creeping disrepair. The Mackintosh headstone, in the shape of a Celtic cross, lies face-down in two pieces after being damaged last year.
The importance of "dark tourism" was recognised several years ago by Professor John Lennon, of Glasgow Caledonian University, who identified an upsurge of morbid interest in the deaths of famous people.
He said the Necropolis could be one of Glasgow's biggest assets but tourism leaders were trailing behind those in Edinburgh, who had learned to exploit the renewed interest in sinister and morbid attractions.
However, Edinburgh's treatment of graveyards attracted criticism last year when the council levelled a number of headstones in public cemeteries which were deemed unsafe.
Its actions were attacked by conservation groups, who claimed it contravened guidance from Historic Scotland on conserving graveyards.
Ingval Maxwell, director of the technical, conservation, research and education group at Historic Scotland, said greater effort should be made to preserve headstones while ensuring their safety.
He said: "We can see that there can be a need to take corrective action for a number of headstones. But from a conservation angle, laying headstones flat is in many ways the worst thing that can happen to them.
"It's putting stones in the worst possible position where decay can set in."
THE LIFE OF A CEMETERY
Most of Britain's most important cemeteries date from the early 1800s, when tradesmen could afford plots of land instead of being buried next to churches.
Burial in the Necropolis in Glasgow was seen as a sign of prestige and achievement. The site houses some of the city's leading industrialists of the nineteenth century. Figures include Charles Tennant, whose invention of indoor cotton bleaching revolutionised the Victorian textile industry.
Another is Walter MacFarlane, whose firm became a global manufacturer of cast iron, shaping the lamp-posts in Sydney Harbour and distinctive railings in New Orleans.
The cemetery's best known feature is the Egyptian Vaults, where bodies were stored while their final resting place was constructed.
The Necropolis, which lies behind Glasgow Cathedral and the St Mungo Museum Of Religious Life And Art, is also home to a small population of roe deer.
Source: http://editorial.yellowbrix.com/editorial/editstory.nsp?step=5&story_id=72809846
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.” Epicurius
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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