Sighthill Cemetery and The Martyr's Monument
A walk at Barnhill train station.
What a grumpy faced dog! Already ten minutes from our train and then having to wait for the lights twice to cross a very busy road isn't Rudy's favourite way to start a walk!
Sighthill Cemetery
Sighthill Cemetery dates from 1840 but is still active with a crematorium and new burials. We kept to the older section looking for a particular monument.
Martyr's Monument
The 1820 Radical War was a short-lived period of political unrest in Scotland, most notably by artisan weavers seeking workers protections from the Industrial Revolution's "progress". Government agents are said to have encouraged strikers to act with lies of "an army of men" ready. The leaders were caught, hanged and their corpses beheaded. The last capital punishment beheadings in Britain.
Erected by Public Subscription July 1847. To the memory of JOHN BAIRD. Aged 32, and ANDREW HARDIE. aged 28, Who for the cause of FREEDOM. Suffered death, at Stirling, 8th Sep. 1820.
The government tactics were successful and Radical insurrection in Scotland never found new leaders. The public were seduced with romantic circus and nostalgia for a past that never really was. Scotland adopted tartan tourism as a national identity.
Rudy tried to listen to the Scottish History stories but he had somewhere much more important to be. Something about a park picnic he was promised.
