Lest we forget

Your feature on the bicentenary of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital (3 October) rightly remembers the great men who made the hospital what it is today. Unfortunately, we do not honour them by respecting their last resting place.

In common with most memorials in Edinburgh’s older graveyards that of Andrew Duncan in the Buccleuch Church graveyard has declined badly due to weathering, neglect and vandalism.

When in Edinburgh I visit family graves and I find that the rate of decline of memorials generally is accelerating.

Not only do we seem to be indifferent to the gradual disappearance of the history of Edinburgh’s citizens, but the council has encouraged vandalism by pushing over headstones (often face down, so that they can not be read) deemed unsafe.

The Royal Edinburgh Hospital bicentenary would be an appropriate opportunity to start reversing this trend.

If NHS Lothian was to preserve and restore the Andrew Duncan memorial then other organisations and individuals might start to preserve memorials to other important people in Edinburgh’s graveyards. But please let us not allow predictable arguments over ownership to get in the way of saving our vanishing history.

Hamish Johnston

Macleod Road

Balloch, Inverness