Dundee Cemetery Company

The Dundee Cemetery Company

The Dundee Cemetery Company was founded in 1844 as a limited stock company. The application for shares was double the number sought and the list was closed on 11^th December, 1844.

“Cemetery” rather than the familiar “Burying Ground” indicates this was a new venture for the town, prompted by the rapid expansion of its population and the growing number of relatively affluent townsfolk.

The prospectus states, “The objective of the present Company is to mitigate the existing evils, and to provide a suitable place of sepulchre,  at onece removed from the habitations of the living, and yet within a convenient distance from the Town.

It will be seen that the present Company intend to give what is not to be had in the Town’s Burying Grounds, an absolute and perpetual right  to Burial Grounds in the Cemetery.”

The Company offered six classes of burial places and also controlled the design of the monuments and for this reason the Western provides a valuable insight into nineteenth century society and its tastes and aspirations.

First class	North Terrace Wall	Family Vaults
Second class	East and West walls	15 sq ft enclosed by uniform iron railings on a stone cope
Third Class	South side of Terrace wall	Superior buying places, tablets in wall for each place
Fourth Class	Centre	Monuments may be erected
Fifth Class	Centre	Headstones erected
Sixth Class	Centre	Unmarked graves for poorer classes/



The Western in 1906

 During the twentieth century the fortunes of the Cemetery Company gradually declined until it was ofrced to sell a portion at the north to the Aberdeen firm of Kingwell Securities Ltd in 1973. The major portion of the Cemetery was bought by the then Dundee District Council for £1 in 1979.