An eerie feeling at memorial
Several years ago I had a weird experience while working as a ranger at Muirshiel Country Park in the Renfrewshire hills.
It was a foggy afternoon and night was falling as I followed a footpath through conifer trees clinging tenaciously to the steep hillside above the rugged Calder Glen.
Through the dark-green foliage of soaring spruces and pillared pines I saw the granite obelisk marking the grave of Lord Francis Nathaniel Conyngham, Member of Parliament for County Clare and Crimean War naval hero, who died at Muirshiel House on September 14, 1880, just 10 days before his 48th birthday.
The temperature dipped chillingly, the conifer-canopied woodland fell silent and I sensed a forbidding, frightening presence which made me retrace my footsteps to the ranger hut.
It seemed I took a quantum leap into a parallel universe and the veil of time was rent asunder.
I had visions of those sad scenes in the majestic Muirshiel mansion a century earlier as mourners gathered round Lord Francis’s flower-festooned oak
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and silver-mounted coffin and listened to words of comfort from the Rev JG Cunningham.
Among the sable-suited and darkfrocked mourners were Lord Francis’s sister, Lady Churchill, and his nephew, the Earl Charles Spencer, an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales.
As mourners journeyed the four miles from Lochwinnoch to Muirshiel in horse-drawn carriages, the village church bell’s lugubrious peals tolled up
Calder Glen to the melancholic mansion.
Lord Francis had erected the 20fthigh monument four years earlier to the memory of his parents, the Marquis and Marchioness of Conyngham.
Aware of his impending death, he ordered his own brick-lined grave to be hewn from solid rock below the heatherclad hillside memorial overlooking his beloved Muirshiel home.
It was wet, misty and gloomy as the black-clad cortege solemnly snaked up the steep slope, with the coffin borne on the sturdy shoulders of six stalwart estateworkers who were, from time to time, relieved of their heavy load by another six men.
After the graveside oration by the Rev John Russell, beautiful wreaths of heather, violets and immortelles – a variety of daisy – were lovingly laid on the coffin which was lowered into the tenebrous tomb where it is still embosomed today in its woodland vault.
For years afterwards, I passed the Conyngham Monument every day during my park patrols but never again experienced the eerie sensation which I encountered that foggy afternoon on the anniversary of Lord Conyngham’s burial.
Sometimes, the minister’s words of committal echoed down through the ages: “In summer, may this grave be ever green. May the wild flowers bloom and shed their fragrance to the gentle breezes that hum a lullaby to the silent sleeper.
“And in winter, may the sparkling snow mantle our fallen friend in his coverlet. Gone to sleep, may his awakening be one of everlasting joy.”