Mercer Burial Ground

As anyone who reads this journal regularly will know, we Flums just love a mystery, especially if it involves maps and/or fancy gateposts.

Continuing our enquiries on Dryden House we came across this informative website, which, if you read down the page, indicates that the early owners of Dryden House and nearby Mavisbank were buried in a private family plot in Glen Tulchan, in Perthshire. Even better, that it has unique gateposts. This, we decided, we must see.

The precise location is not given and extensive trawling of Google, maps and satellite image, achieved nothing; it does not appear on recent maps. However, Miss Flum found, on a 1901 map, a burial ground clearly marked in a likely area.

Today Mr Flum and I drove up, plodded down a field, climbed over two rickety gates and found the very place, with the storks still intact on the entrance.

The pedestal on the left bears the date 1377, that on the right, 1877. The gates are locked, but the reverse of the pedestals can be seen through the railings from the far side - although the whole script is difficult to read with undergrowth in the way - mostly describing the escutcheon (their coat of arms) itself in heraldic terms, the storks being the family crest, with water-serpents writhing in their beaks.


Individual gravestones are impossible to read, so we do not have proof of our particular Mercers' burial there. No matter, we have found that link between a house no longer in existence and an ancient Perthshire family.