Leaflets for Visitors
Some Of The Notable Churchyard Monuments

Translate This Page

Return to Leaflet Index

Return to Main Website

Rev Robert Pont (1524 - 1606) [No 451]

This is probably the oldest surviving gravestone from the graveyard. The Rev Robert Pont was a staunch ally of John Knox, and was present at the first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1560. He was responsible for revising the first Book of Discipline (1561) and served as Minister of Dunblane and Dunkeld, Provost of Trinity College (Edinburgh). As Commissioner of Moray, Inverness and Banff, he was responsible for spreading the Reformation to these areas.

In 1574, Pont was appointed the Minister of St Cuthbert's Church, and served six times as Moderator of the General Assembly, through difficult times in Scotland. His influence extended beyond the church; he was appointed a Senator of the College of Justice in 1572. He accompanied the English Ambassador to Stirling in 1578 to mediate in a power struggle between James Douglas, the 4th Earl of Morton who had served as Regent, and Colin Campbell, 6th Earl of Argyll , and John Stewart, 4th Earl of Atholl, which threatened to escalate into civil war. Pont opposed the involvement of the Crown in the church and the suggestion of an Episcopalian system.

Pont was greatly enthusiastic for a full union with England, publishing his 'De Unione Britanniae' a year after the Union of the Crowns.  

John Napier (1550 - 1617)

(Memorial plaque in the entrance hall of the church) John Napier is best known as the inventor of logarithms. (The development of logarithms is given credit as the largest single factor in the general adoption of decimal arithmetic. He also invented the so-called "Napier's bones" and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Napier was buried without the West Port of Edinburgh in the Church of St Cuthbert and in a vault, during April 1617.  

Henry Nisbet Of Dean (d 1692)

The earliest known remains of one of the many church buildings on this site, is the Nisbet of Dean vault, built in 1692 for Henry Nisbet. On the outside of the north church wall, facing a flight of stairs leading to his tomb, is Henry Nisbet's coat-of-arms. Above the entrance is an inscription in Latin, which reads :

"Henry Nisbet of Dean, preferring Fame to Riches, and Virtue to Fame, despising earthly things, and aspiring after Heavenly enjoyments, being mindful of death and waiting for the resurrection, in his own life, and at his own sight, caused build this sepulchral monument for him, in the year of our Lord 1692"

Henry Nisbet may have been exhibiting quiet humour, for his building of the tomb resulted in heaps of unpaid bills and uncleared rubble in the church, both of which were cleared only after a number of court cases. (John Nisbet of Dirleton, a successor of Henry's, was prosecutor of the Covenanters at the end of the 17th century, and author of 'Dirleton's Doubts'.)  

Rev David Williamson (1636 - 1706) [No 451]

Rev David Williamson is believed to be the 'Daintie Davie' of Scots songs, and a seven times married Minister of St Cuthbert's. He was ousted from the church in 1665 as a Covenanter. He then served as a Captain on the rebel side at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge (1679). He was restored as minister of St. Cuthbert's in 1689, and subsequently became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1702.  

Sir Henry Raeburn (1756 - 1823) [No 293]

Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter and Scotland's first significant portrait painter since the Union to remain based in Scotland. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland. He is actually buried next door, in the Church of St John the Evangelist although there is a record of him owning a burial plot in St Cuthbert's graveyard, and there is a large memorial to him on the east wall of the graveyard.  

Alexander Nasmyth (1758 - 1840) [No 917]

Alexander Nasmyth was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter (a pupil of Allan Ramsay), also an architect, and inventor. His most notable painting is probably the much-copied portrait of his fried Robert Burns, which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery. Although he began as a portrait painter, eventually, his strong Liberal opinions offended many of his aristocratic patrons in a politically charged Edinburgh, leading him to turn to landscape painting instead. His landscapes are all of actual places, and architecture is usually an important element. (Nasmyth's six daughters all became artists. His eldest son, Patrick, studied under his father, then went to London and attracted attention as a landscapist. Another son James, invented the steam hammer.)  

George Meikle Kemp (1795 - 1844) [No 806]

George Meikle Kemp was a Scottish carpenter and master joiner, a draughtsman, and a self-taught architect. He is best known as the designer of the Scott Monument in central Edinburgh, although sadly he did not live to see the completion of his great work. Kemp is also commemorated by a memorial at Moy Hall, Redscarhead, (formerly the workshop of Kemp's master, Andrew Noble),  

Thomas De Quincey (1785 -1859) [No 428]

Thomas De Quincey was an English essayist, and the author of 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'. Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of 'addiction literature' in the West. As with many addicts, De Quincey's own opium addiction may have had a 'self-medication' aspect for real physical illnesses, as well as a psychological aspect He was an acknowledged influence on many later authors, although he himself has largely slipped from fame. His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Charles Baudelaire and Nikolai Gogol, but even major 20th-century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Hector Berlioz admired and claimed to be influenced by his work.  

John Lizars (1787 - 1860) [No 631]

John Lizars was a surgeon. He served as a naval surgeon on a ship commanded by Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and saw active service in engagements during the Peninsular War. He returned to Edinburgh in 1814 and began practicing surgery, while teaching anatomy and surgery. He went on to serve as professor of surgery at Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and senior surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, developing a number of new procedures. In 1825, he became the first in Britain to successfully remove an ovary. Around the same time he is known to have lectured the naturalist Charles Darwin.

His most notable work was 'A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body', published in five volumes between 1822 and 1826. Lizars is also remembered for 'The Use and Abuse of Tobacco' (1856), an early work identifying the dangers of tobacco, including its carcinogenic nature.

Lizars had a long-running and bitter dispute with fellow surgeon James Syme, which led to legal action between the pair on more than one occasion and was eventually to damage Lizars's career.  

James Findlay (1822 - 1862)

James Findlay enlisted in the Royal Artillery at the age of nineteen. Transferring to the Land Transport Corps, he served in the Crimean War as a transport officer. Re-joining the Royal Artillery, he became a Chief Master Gunner, and worked with Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth and Frederick James Ritchie to set up the One o'clock Gun time service. He was the first gunner to fire the one o'clock gun from Edinburgh Castle.  

Robert Tait McKenzie (1867 - 1938)

Robert Tait McKenzie was a Canadian-born sculptor, doctor, soldier, physical educator, athlete and Scouter. During the First World War, his methods and inventions helped to restore and rehabilitate those injured by war, and have since provided a sound basis for the development of modern physiotherapy practices. He created over two hundred works of art seen around the world today.

Near the end of his life, McKenzie expressed a wish for his heart be buried in front of the Scottish-American War Memorial in Edinburgh, that he had created. When he died this request was denied by the city of Edinburgh, but his heart was subsequently buried in St. Cuthbert's churchyard.