Graveyard rocks: Lt John Irving’s memorial in the Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh

Without a hint of the macabre, geologists are commonly attracted to cemeteries; but not so much to celebrate the dear departed as to admire the lithologies in which their eulogies have been inscribed. Here in Edinburgh, we are spoilt for choice, but for one memorial in the Dean Cemetery it is the loose rocks piled up around the base of the formal monument that are as much a geological attraction as the gravestone itself (Figure 1), particularly given the dramatic historical circumstances of the grave. This is the last resting place of Lt John Irving (1815–1848?), a casualty of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated attempt to force the North-West Passage through the frozen waters of the Canadian Arctic, the notorious Erebus and Terror expedition that set sail from the Royal Navy’s Woolwich dockyard in May 1845.