Nether Kirkyard - St Cyrus, Aberdeenshire.
Posted by: 
creg-ny-baa
N 56° 45.936 W 002° 25.128
30V E 535528 N 6291444
Old burial ground beneath the cliffs at St Cyrus National Nature Reserve on the east coast of Scotland in the old county of Kincardineshire.
Waymark Code: WMWNJQ
Location: Northern Scotland, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/22/2017
Views: 2
This was a religious site since 880AD when it was founded by St Grig. The church of Ecclesgreig was consecrated by the Bishop of St Andrews in 1242 and remained here until 1632, when a new church was built in the village of St Cyrus on top of the cliffs, it became the Upper Kirkyard and thus the Ecclesgreig Church and burial ground became the Nether, or Lower Kirkyard.
Nothing remains of the church but the cemetery is still here, along with the Watcher's House, a building where families kept a vigil on new graves due to a spate of grave robberies. Most of the hundred or so graves still here date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The most strangest incident involved the suicide of local poet George Beattie, who shot himself next to his sister's grave on September 29th 1823. This is told on a faded information board within the walls of the cemetery near the entrance.
The cemetery is situated in a spectacular location beneath the volcanic andesitic rocks of the cliffs above. It now lies within the National Nature Reserve of St Cyrus and can be visited from the car park at the visitor centre a few hundred yards to the south.