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Home > Curiosity of the week > Watch out for grave robbers in Scotland

Watch out for grave robbers in Scotland

By Caroline King - June 18, 2020Posted in : Curiosity of the week, Heritage

We’re back with our Curiosity of the Week slot (hurrah), and this week we visit an unusual hut on a coastal nature reserve in Scotland.

Graveyard at St Cyrus
Graveyard located on a trail at St Cyrus National Nature Reserve (Photo: Contrary Life)

St Cyrus National Nature Reserve is located on the Aberdeenshire coast near Montrose. Walking around the reserve’s trails you may well come across an old graveyard with a slightly sinister feature.

This peaceful burial ground is known as Ecclesgreig (Church of Grig) and in one corner it features a little stone building. Easy to miss, this little hut actually had a very important function for grieving relatives.

Watch Hut at St Cyrus
Watch Hut at St Cyrus National Nature Reserve (Photo: Contrary Life)

The building once served as a Watch Hut, where relatives would spend the night keeping watch over their loved one’s grave. But why would they need to camp out in such a beautiful quiet spot, what were they guarding against? Rampant foxes? Ghosts?

They were in fact guarding against grave robbers. Back in the early 19th century grave robbery was a real risk. This was due to the high demand for freshly deceased bodies from the world of science and medicine. This was a time when corpses could be sold to medical schools who would use them for dissection and anatomy lectures.

To the relatives of those buried in the graveyard, this little hut would have provided much needed comfort in more gruesome times; helping to keep people warm from the elements in this rural coastal spot.

St Cyrus nature reserve
A trail through the picturesque St Cyrus National Nature Reserve (Photo: Contrary Life)

For more information on accessibility during the Covid pandemic and visiting in the future, please check the reserve’s website.

We are always on the lookout for interesting customs, hidden places, and unique buildings and landmarks, to share with our readers. If you have an idea for Curiosity of the Week then please do get in touch, we welcome suggestions from everyone. You can contact us by emailing info@contrarylife.com or send us a message via Facebook.

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