As the British Empire expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries, many of its most prominent pioneers were Scots, whether as traders, soldiers, missionaries or administrators. They left their mark in multifarious ways, among them the monuments to their dead.

Although many imperial cemeteries were unified, with Britons of all countries and religious persuasions buried side by side, in some of the larger cities there were separate burial grounds. One such place was Calcutta, where hundreds of gravestones in the Scottish cemetery decay gently amid the tropical vegetation.

“It is an extraordinary record of the lives of generations of Scots, a part of Scotland’s heritage overseas and surely a site for which present-day Scotland should feel some responsibility”, said Thomas Addyman, an Edinburgh-based archaeological consultant who has initiated a survey of the Calcutta cemetery, “but it is a scene of desolation. Monuments are in every stage of decay and collapse, burst apart by roots or swamped by strangling undergrowth.”

Mr Addyman’s survey, under the auspices of the Calcutta Scottish Heritage Trust, has begun to assess the potential and the problems of the six-acre site, which lies in a densely-packed mixed Muslim and Christian neighbourhood. The cemetery was established in 1820 and extended in 1858, “and from then until the 1940s was the principal burying place for generations of Calcutta-based Scots, Bengali members of the St Andrew’s church congregation, Welsh and other Nonconformists,” Mr Addyman said.

The survey showed that the northwestern quarter of the cemetery was irregularly laid out, unlike the neat grid elsewhere, and this seems to have been the core of the original burial ground. The earliest monuments were classically inspired, built of brick (a common material in Bengali architecture) and covered with elaborately-moulded plaster. Into them were set panels of imported limestone bearing the epitaph.

Later on, a buff sandstone, also imported and similar to York stone, was used for monuments of both classical and Gothic-revival design, and then in the late 19th century white marble was increasingly used.

“There are oddities throughout the cemetery,” Mr Addyman said. “One monument is formed from glazed terracotta blocks enriched with acanthus scrolls; there is a marble tomb carved in Moghul style, but also Celtic high crosses of Aberdeen granite.” Those commemorated spanned the social record, including officers of the Honourable East India Company, the Rev John Adam (“late missionary to the heathen”) and PC James Wheatley (“murdered in the execution of his duty”) in 1844. Many of the Scots came from around Dundee, the main processing centre for Bengal jute and once known as “Jute City”.

Mr Addyman’s team have produced a standard record sheet for each grave and monument: there are more than 1,600 burial plots to document, and they have so far recorded a 20 per cent sample, with support from the Scottish Government, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage and other church and heritage bodies in northern India. The team found that lead lettering had been carefully robbed from inscriptions and all cast iron features have also gone, but that stone robbing was rare. The main danger was from invasive tropical roots, “a number of structures having exploded”, Mr Addyman said.

Some historically important monuments had already been moved to the much larger South Park Street cemetery for protection, and the survey of the remainder will take place this year and next, alongside conservation work and clearing to restore the Scottish cemetery as a green public space in the heart of bustling modern Calcutta, for the benefit of the local population and “for those wishing to explore the many fascinating stories of Scots who gave their lives to India”, Mr Addyman said.

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