Stiffs and Stones

Stiffs and Stones. Local historian, Sybil Cavanagh will take you on a tour round some of the most interesting gravestones in West Lothian.

If you want to feel the past all around you, there are few better places to go than one of the local churchyards. Each gravestone is a little story, around which your imagination can get to work – children who died young, sons who died in far-flung parts of the empire, victims who died in accidents, and symbols of death, of immortality, of the work of the deceased. Sybil’s talk will look at what we can learn from the carvings on a gravestone, and what were the customs around death and burial in Scotland in the past – all illustrated with fascinating images from local churchyards.