Understanding Scottish graveyards: An interpretative approach

SOLD (Betty Willsher (already known to gravestoneenthusiasts as co-author of Stones: A Guide toSome Remarkable Eighteenth-CenturyGravestones) here takes a historical and interpretive approach to Scotland's graveyards. She examines their past and points out the features in them that reflect it; she guides the reader among the stones, discussing types of monument and relating each to its period; she explains the earlier symbolic carvings and analyses the changing fashions in sculpture and inscription.Her purpose is not only to inspire in the reader a fresh appreciation of the local graveyard. Scotland's graveyards arc in peril. Yearly, stones are lost, destroyed by vandals, toppled by gales, and cleared away by over-zealous tidiers. Those that are left must be conserved; they must also be described and listed before it is too late, and Mrs Willsher devotes a section of her book to explaining aspects of this urgently needed recording work.This book has been commissioned and prepared onthe initiative of the Council for British Archaeology Scotland.)