One of my regrets about my first year about university was not living at the West Park halls. Not for any serious reason - I adore my flatmates, and in a lot of ways it was far easier living close to the city centre, but one thing always made me long for the off campus accommodation; the cemetery.
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| View from the back of the cemetery. |
Yup, punching my goth card here - I adore cemeteries. I spent a good chunk of my childhood wandering around old graveyards, and it's a practice I continue to this day. Dundee Western Cemetery is right next to West Park Halls and Conference Centre on Perth Road, and I spent a fair amount of time this year wandering about it (indeed, I even studied in there). There's lots of other smaller cemeteries in my part of Dundee I visited once or twice - Balgay Cemetery is a probably larger cemetery also on my route back from Ninewells, but it mainly seems to be newer graves, and the older styles of the Western keep drawing me back.
The cemetery has a war graves section (from memory I think it's mainly Falklands deaths?), and - something I didn't know until I did some research - has two interesting historical figures; James Bowman Lindsay (1799-1862), one of the early experimenters with electricity - he pioneered a 'constant electric light' 40 years before Edison's light bulb! - and Preston Watson (1880-1915), who some claim to have made the first powered flight over the Carse of Gowrie before the Wright Brothers.
It was a glorious day when I first took these photos, and the cemetery is really stunning - makes me wonder, as full as my schedule is, if they're looking for volunteer groundskeeping.
This is just a few photos from my first visit - I plan on going around the grounds documenting the elaborate graves (I didn't take any photos of the large tombs for wealthy Dundonians, stupidly, as gorgeous as they were), and think I might actually visit all the cemeteries in Dundee properly; these were taken on my iPhone, which coped surprisingly well due to the good afternoon light.
Until then!
Fee
Beautiful - and pretty amazing for iPhone pics! I never seem to get anything decent on mine. :P
ReplyDeleteThank you! I think the trick is making sure your hand isn't shaky and especially that the light is good (as it was here).
DeleteThose pictures are lovely! That's a cemetery with a beautiful view - I would love to have a wander around it. It looks very peaceful :)
ReplyDeleteCheers! It is a gorgeous cemetery - I love wandering about there halfway through a run. :)
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