Grave desecration

Alan McKinney (Letters, 18 February) suggests that rebuilding gravestones could be undertaken (if you will forgive the pun) by those sentenced to community service orders. He adds that 9,483 of those gravestones were laid flat in Edinburgh.

As my father’s headstone was one of those laid flat on the grounds that it might present a danger by falling over (it had been put in place less than ten years before and, being “L”-shaped would have had to defy the laws of physics to fall on to anyone), I have a particular axe to grind in this matter. Not only did it cost me a significant sum to put back upright, but, in the case of my father-in-law’s gravestone, we were refused permission to put three neighbouring headstones back upright on the grounds that they were not our relations.

If one visits a graveyard such as the one in the Morningside area of Edinburgh, one would be forgiven for thinking that either a major storm had wrought havoc, or that a gang of vandals had pushed over and broken hundreds of stones, most of which have been long forgotten by the family of the person represented.

Few will know about the desecration visited upon their relations’ headstones and this scar on Edinburgh’s face will not go away. However, a far better solution, to my mind, would be to put the individuals who dreamed up this action and those who perpetrated it to put it right without pay. That might be some kind of justice for the distress this caused me and many other people in the city.

Andrew HN Gray

Craiglea Drive

Edinburgh