On your left is Old Calton Burial Ground... a quiet rectangle of stone and sky perched on the flank of Calton Hill. The city noise drops off a notch here, like someone turned the volume down out of respect... or maybe out of mild fear of upsetting the neighbors.
This cemetery opened in 1718, back when Calton was its own wee village at the hill’s base. For locals, burying family at South Leith Parish Church was a real hassle-longer trip, bad roads, and grief doesn’t exactly make you feel like commuting. So the Incorporated Trades of Calton pooled their resources and bought about half an acre up here from Lord Balmerino for £1,013. That was serious money then-roughly around £170,000 today, give or take, depending on how you measure it. Not bad for a place nobody’s rushing to move into.
They even got permission to create an access road up the steep slope-what became today’s Calton Hill road. Over the years, the burial ground expanded, filling with tradesmen, families, and eventually some of the biggest names in the Scottish Enlightenment and Edinburgh’s publishing world.
Now, look around at the layout and you’ll notice something: the place feels a bit... interrupted. That’s because it was. In the 1810s, the city pushed through a grand new road-Waterloo Place-built between 1815 and 1819 and named to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. Progress, as usual, arrived carrying a shovel. The new road split the graveyard in two, and the city had to move bodies and stones. But by all accounts, they did it carefully: bones gathered, wrapped, and reburied at New Calton Burial Ground just east of here, with some older stones re-erected there. So if you ever spot an 18th-century gravestone in a 19th-century cemetery... that’s why. Edinburgh loves a good logistical paradox.
Old Calton is non-denominational-no single church claiming it-which helped make it a practical choice for people who didn’t fit neatly into the usual boxes. One story I always come back to is from 1795: a Jewish dentist and chiropodist-his name appears as Herman Lion, among other variations-petitioned the town council because he couldn’t be buried in a Christian graveyard. The council agreed to sell him a small plot nearby for £17-maybe around £2,000 today. It’s noted on old maps as a Lyons family Jewish burial vault, close to the City Observatory wall. A small detail, but it says a lot about who got included... and how hard people sometimes had to push just to be laid to rest.
And then there’s David Hume-philosopher, historian, professional irritant to the religious establishment. His tomb is the big cylindrical one that shows up like a punctuation mark on the skyline. When Hume died in 1776, public hostility was so intense-partly because he openly rejected religion-that the grave had to be guarded for eight days. Nothing says “controversial thinker” like needing security at your funeral. He asked for a simple inscription-just his name and dates-leaving “posterity to add the rest.” Posterity, naturally, has had opinions.
This ground is also packed with Edinburgh’s makers and shapers: scientist John Playfair, clergyman Robert Candlish of the Free Church movement, and rival publishers William Blackwood and Archibald Constable-men who helped decide what Scotland read, argued over it, and then ended up sharing the same hillside. There are beautiful old stones too, especially the ones carved for tradesmen-skulls, hourglasses, tools-basically the 18th-century version of saying, “Time’s up, pal.”
When you’re set, the Political Martyrs’ Monument is a 2-minute walk heading east.
