Cities turn from green to grey

There’s nothing like a concrete pour to tickle the fancy of public authorities. Historic buildings or green space? A touch of the grey will do the trick. Their resculpting of Dundee’s old Overgate in the 1960s was such a success they repeated it by obliterating Wellgate.

Dundee wasn’t alone. Perth aped the trend with St John’s Square and Arbroath bulldozed half the town to create a dual carriageway to nowhere.

The Soviets were masters, of course. I was once in Gdansk where the authorities even managed to give granite monuments the appearance of concrete.

But there were the ones that got away. Dundee’s Howff cemetery is the greatest survivor. Twice in the early 20th Century attempts were fought off to busy it up a bit with a slap of concrete.

In 1932, just 70 years after it was shut as grossly offensive to public health, some on Dundee Corporation had their eyes on it as a bus station.

The Howff had once been so overcrowded that the “hairy scalp” of the dead littered the ground. Bodies turfed out of graves to make way for new arrivals were dumped in public view. That stopped in the mid 1800s when they introduced the more refined method of smashing coffins away out of the public gaze.

A few days before Halloween in 1932, Bailie JG Fraser forced the bus station on to Dundee Corporation’s agenda.

It would have been a massive task. Thousands of tonnes of remains would have had to be scrapped from the 2.8-acre site, more than 1,450 tombstones disposed of and what was once described as Dundee’s green lung replaced by belching buses.

Town clerk Mr WH Blyth Martin eventually killed off the idea by pointing out that anyone with an ownership interest in lairs would have to be contacted and it would require an Act of Parliament to change the Howff’s use.

Four years later the cemetery was under threat again. A socialist councillor, Peter Thoms, proposed a “monstrous” scheme to build houses on the Howff.

He argued houses were needed near where people worked.

He did not even win support of party colleagues before being shouted down.

People stroll the walkways of the Overgate, Dundee, in 1971.

Shoppers walk through St John’s Square precinct in Perth in 1975.