Gravestone of Mary Dalrymple Maclagan

Dedicated to: 
Inscription: 

To the blessed memory of Mary Dalrymple Maclagan
November 25 1878 – 7 January 1915
We give thanks to God always for you. 1Thess 1.2
Eternal rest give unto her O Lord and let light perpetual shine upon her.

Erected by: 
Maclagan family
Designed by: 
Mrs Mary Louisa Maclagan
Date: 
1915
Material: 
stone; wrought iron fence; yew trees.
Location:
Maclagan Family graveyard, Laggan Wood
The Balmuick Road
Comrie
Additional information: 

The Maclagan Family graveyard is an area of 120 square yards, it lies to the east of the road from Milton to Balmuick in the Parish of Monzievaird and Strowan. The purchase included a servitude right of roadway 6 feet wide around the outside of and immediately adjoining the four sides of the ground and a right of access across the rough road from the Balmuick road.

The site for the graveyard was bought from the family’s close friends, the Rev Charles David Robertson Williamson (1853 – 1943), who by the time of Mary’s death in 1915 had sold the Lawers Estate, keeping the lands to the west of the Milton Burn, and was living with his mother, the Hon Selina-Maria Williamson (daughter of the first Lord Tredegar), at Tomperran. Father Williamson was well known in Comrie for his ministry at St Margaret’s R C Church.

A photograph taken in the 1930s shows the enclosed graveyard planted with rose bushes. To the rear of the graveyard are the remains of a small trough, perhaps there for the horses that pulled the wagons carrying the coffins up the steep hill past the Milton to the graveyard. A metal box for gardening tools lies along the east wall.

In the late nineteenth century, the Maclagan family spent the summer months at Comrie House and in 1909 David Douglas and Mary Louisa Maclagan built their own house ‘House of Ross’ on land purchased from Peter Drummond of Drumearn on the west side of Comrie.

The Maclagans referred to the area above the Milton as their ‘Happy Valley;’ and in memory of the family, the fifth hole at the Comrie golf course bears the same name