SCOTTISH HERITAGE experts are to travel to India this weekend in a bid to save a historic cemetery from dereliction and conserve the final resting place of dozens of former Dundee jute workers.

As many as 2000 Scots are buried in the Scottish Cemetery of Kolkata in the centre of modern-day Calcutta, but the graveyard has fallen into disrepair after years of neglect and is now almost totally overgrown.

Calcutta was the capital of British India until 1912 and became home to thousands of Dundonians sent out to establish and then manage the Indian elements of the jute trade that flourished throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many gravestones at Kolkata—marking the tombs of jute merchants, industrialists, soldiers, missionaries and colonial administrators —are unsafe and dedications have been lost.

However, surveyors from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) are keen to preserve what is left and fly out this weekend to begin cataloguing the graves.

A searchable database relating to the dead will be compiled that will allow relatives of former jute workers from Dundee and Fife to trace their relatives.

After The Courier yesterday mentioned the project to Dundee Heritage Trust, operators of Verdant Works jute museum, heritage and exhibitions director Gill Poulter swiftly agreed to give the team access to a photo album in the archives featuring 25 pictures taken at Kolkata in the early 1950s—data that will now be taken with the group on next week’s research trip.

Gill said the project was very significant for the people of Dundee as the city’s links with the jute trade continued to resonate.

She said, “People went over there to design and build the jute mills and fit them out with Dundee-made machinery—some of it is still working to this day.

“Basically they went over to manage and run the jute mills and also people were involved in selling and merchanting the raw material back to Dundee.” Over the years thousands emigrated to India from Dundee.

The long-term aim of the project—led by the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust—is to bring the cemetery back into a decent state of repair by training local craftsmen how to sensitively refurbish the memorials.

Archaeologist and project member Tom Addyman said, “The first trip will basically be a recce of the cemetery and we will start to record the graves.”

Further project details will be available via an online blog kept by team members on their trip, accessible at http://scottishcemeterykolkata.wordpress.com