Warriston Cemetery, Warriston Road, Edinburgh

Warriston Cemetery is a large, irregular-plan cemetery of approximately 11 hectares, initially designed by David Cousin in 1842 and subsequently extended and altered by J Dick Peddie in 1845 and 1862, with a further extension to the north in 1905. The cemetery includes a terrace, steps, serpentine paths, a riverside walk, catacombs, and a neo-Tudor bridge, and contains numerous important architectural and sculptural monuments, many commemorating notable citizens.

The catacombs, originally designed by David Cousin in 1842, were extended to the east and west by J Dick Peddie in 1862. The long wall is constructed of grey sandstone ashlar, organised into bays containing wall monuments in a grouping of 4-1-13-1-4, separated by buttresses. Features include a projecting base course, a wallhead cornice, a blocking course to parapet, and small, shield-shaped openings with some intact metal grilles providing light and ventilation for the vaults. Larger semicircular grilles light the walkway above the vaults. Hoodmoulded Tudor-arched entrances to the vaults, now bricked up, are located in the centre bay and the bays fifth from the left and right, with the latter featuring polygonal angle piers decorated with a cusped tracery frieze below the cornice.

Several notable monuments are present, including one designed by John Dick Peddie for his father, Reverend James Peddie, minister of the Bristo Church. This monument consists of a Doric canopied pedestal (previously containing an urn) with a roof decorated with antefixes. A memorial to the landscape painter Horatio McCulloch features a Celtic cross with an artist's palette and brushes incorporating a laurel wreath on one side of the pedestal, and a small dog on the other. A memorial to Sir James Young Simpson stands alongside his family obelisk, and there is a memorial to the sculptor John Rhind. Many mural monuments lining the cemetery walls feature the draped urns characteristic of the period.

The neo-Tudor bridge, designed by J Dick Peddie in 1845, is a stone subway linking the north and south sections of the cemetery beneath what was the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton Railway line (now a cycle-track). Constructed of grey sandstone ashlar, it features roll-moulded entrances, a coped stepped parapet with a blank heraldic panel and cusped tracery to the southeast, four engaged polygonal piers with quatrefoil panels, and smaller polygonal newel piers with stepped pyramidal caps (two to the northwest, six to the southeast). The latter are linked by walls with saddle-backed coping, also featuring quatrefoil decoration.

The cemetery is enclosed by high, coped rubble boundary walls and decorative cast-iron two-leaf gates, some with missing details. The gatepiers, featuring chamfered corners and platformed stepped pyramidal caps, are located at Warriston Road. Damaged polygonal gatepiers, now relocated, are located to the north. Retaining walls are also present, with extensions to each end of Cousin's original wall added in 1862.