IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Manse Road, ELLON, AB41 7RT

This product of the Eagle Range and Foundry Coy, Birmingham, seems to date from the 1880s, see: http://www.cvphm.org/VictorianBoxes2.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_box

For more on Art on the Green, see: http://www.tolquhon-gallery.co.uk/classes/art_classes.htm

The building on the right is the Eat on the Green restaurant -- nice but not cheap... http://eatonthegreen.co.uk/

Morthouses: "impregnable buildings used to temporarily store corpses until they were corrupt." These were a very Scottish phenomenon, especially in the vicinities of Aberdeen and St Andrews: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bodysnatchers/morthouses.php

I had been told that "Eat on the Green" was good, though not cheap. However as I wanted only a quick snack, I did not investigate.

The morthouse (see: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/132693) is in the background

During the eighteenth century, medical research at universities was hampered by a shortage of dead bodies upon which to perform investigations. Many bodies, cadavers, were purchased illegally from "resurrectionists" who exhumed recently buried bodies for this purpose. In Scotland, the fear of bodysnatching, led parishes to invest in methods to protect the deceased. In Udny, they built a Morthouse. This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers. This one is at Udny in Aberdeenshire.

In the early 1800s, corpses were in demand for dissection in anatomy schools. Body snatchers (resurrection men) supplied the demand by stealing fresh bodies from their graves. Morthouses, immensely strong buildings, were used to store bodies until corrupt and of no value to the anatomists. The one at Udny Green is unique. It is circular, constructed of granite blocks and has inside a turntable on which coffins were placed. By the time a body had gone full circle it was too rotten to be of interest. The opening is guarded by an inner iron door which rises vertically from a pit, and a stout outer door of oak.

Udny Green is a delightful village some 20 km from Aberdeen, with a large village green (somewhat confusingly called The Square). Such a scene is commonplace in the south of England but is almost unknown in Aberdeenshire. The church, school and granite houses serenely look on...