The Canongate Kirkyard () stands around Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland. The churchyard was used for burials from the late 1680s until the mid-20th century.
The most celebrated burials at the kirkyard are the economist Adam Smith and the poet Robert Fergusson, but many other notable people were interred in the cemetery. It has been claimed that David Rizzio, the murdered private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, lies here, although it is highly unlikely that an Italian Catholic would be reinterred in a Protestant graveyard 120 years after his death.
History
The Canongate was, until the 19th century, a separate parish from Edinburgh. This separate parish was formerly served by Holyrood Abbey at the foot of the Royal Mile, and Lady Yester's Church on High School Wynd. In 1687 King James VII adopted the abbey church as a Royal Chapel, and the general population worshipped in Lady Yester's Kirk (built in 1647) until 1691. Both of these sites formerly served as burial grounds to the parish.
The new Canongate Kirk was founded in 1688 and completed in 1691. A large area of ground was purchased beyond that required for the erection of the church, and this appears to have been used for burial immediately from the church's foundation in 1688. This area is now fully occupied as a burial ground.
Due to peculiarities in the parish boundaries, the parish also included some properties on the Nor Loch and, due to an ancient charter linking the castle to Holyrood, also Edinburgh Castle, which saw itself as separate from the parish of Edinburgh, under St Giles'. This led to many burials of soldiers from the castle within the section to the north of the churchyard.
In 1952 the old Church Hall to the east, facing the Canongate, was demolished. This area was reformed as a sunken garden and the Burgh Cross, dating from 1128, was relocated here as a centre-piece, having formerly stood in the roadway in front of the church. The cross was restored in 1888, when it was moved from its temporary home in front of the Canongate Tolbooth to in front of the church, before its transition to the sunken garden in 1953.
The Canongate Kirkyard has been calculated to have 62 tombs, 140 monuments and 150 wall plaques, ledgers, etc.
Monuments and burials of interest
18th-century burials
Very Rev Thomas Wilkie (1645–1711) first minister of Canongate Kirk and twice Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
James Campbell of Tofts (1684–c. 1750) landowner.
The Coachman's Stone, dating to around 1770, displays a skull and the motto "memento mori". It is inscribed "This stone is for the society of Coachdrivers In the Canongate It was chiefly erected by Thomas Jamieson and Robert Maving, treasurer, 1734–65". Below this inscription is a relief sculpture of a coach and horses crossing a bridge. The drivers operated the Edinburgh to London route from White Horse Close, around to the east. Several of the Company are interred at this spot.
John Frederick Lampe (1703–1751) was a composer, conductor and writer of hymn-tunes for Charles Wesley and others. His stone, just to the north of the Fettes tomb, is now badly eroded and for the most part illegible. At the base of the stone is a skull and two crossed bones, and at the top two figures hold a small book with some of his composition inscribed. The stone formerly read:
Bishop Robert Keith (1681–1757) authored A History of the Church and State in Scotland from the Reformation to 1568.
Sir Thomas Calder (1682–1760), stone erected by his grandson Admiral Robert Calder.
Professor Charles Alston (1683–1760), lecturer in Botany and Medicinal Plants at Edinburgh University, was co-founder of the Edinburgh School of Medicine in 1726.
George Drummond (1688–1766) was six times Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and the founder of Edinburgh New Town. He was responsible for the redevelopment of Edinburgh, founding the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; co-founding the Medical School; draining the Nor’ Loch; founding the Royal Exchange in 1753; and most importantly, initiating and founding the New Town and the first North Bridge (1763).