The dead in a Kirkcaldy graveyard are once again at rest.
A touching service of rededication has been performed in Kirkcaldy’s Abbotshall Church, where work had progressed throughout the year to remove and then re-inter bodies from their ancient resting places as urgent repairs were carried out.
Now the work has been completed, Abbotshall Church minister, the Rev Rosemary Frew, has led a service attended by many of those who worked on the delicate job to repair a bulging boundary wall.
Bodies had to be exhumed from their graves, and memorials removed, when it was feared the wall at the church was at risk of collapsing onto the adjoining pavement.
Exhumation expert Peter Mitchell was drafted in by Fife Council to oversee the sensitive and intricate work of removing the bodies as the wall was taken down stone by stone.
Secrets were revealed as the pain-staking work went on and one headstone embedded low in the boundary wall was so deep it might have signified that later graves were simply built up on top of original burial lairs.
In all nearly twice the number of bodies originally estimated had to be exhumed, but it was always known that the records of those interred, many dating back centuries, may not be complete.
Remains had been temporarily placed in the crypt of the church the second oldest Church of Scotland kirk built in Kirkcaldy before being returned to their original graves.
Such has been the precision of the work that the only clue to what has been done is the whiteness of the stretch of newly repaired wall, and the tender shoots of newly sown grass emerging.
The minister said: “It was not straightforward work, it involved so much more than wall building.
“Much planning was required and much expertise and it was carried out with care and sensitivity and professionalism.
“Since 1650 there has been a church on site, and we assume this has been a burial ground since that time and so the excavation team found a little more than we were all expecting,” she added.
But she said while this was hallowed ground for the earthly remains of those who had departed, the graveyard was a place for families to come and remember their loved ones.