Greyfriars Kirkyard

Where it sits. Greyfriars Kirkyard occupies a sloping shelf of ground in Edinburgh's Old Town, entered from Candlemaker Row at the top of the Grassmarket and bounded to the west by the high walls of George Heriot's School. The kirk sits at the northern end; the burial ground spreads south and west in terraces of table tombs, wall monuments and grass, with the Castle rock visible over the rooftops. It is one of the few genuinely quiet spaces in the centre of the city, and it is free to enter.

The story behind it. The ground takes its name from a Franciscan friary that stood nearby before the Reformation. Mary, Queen of Scots granted the land for burial use in 1562, when the churchyard around St Giles could no longer cope, and the kirk itself was completed by 1620 — the first new parish church built in Edinburgh after the Reformation. In February 1638 the National Covenant was signed in and around the kirk, committing its subscribers to resist royal interference in the Scottish church, an act that set the course of the following decades. In 1679, after the defeat at Bothwell Bridge, roughly a thousand Covenanter prisoners were held for months in an enclosed field at the south end of the kirkyard, exposed to the weather; the area is still known as the Covenanters' Prison and is kept locked, opened only for guided tours. It sits beside the black mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate who prosecuted them, and a modern crop of poltergeist stories has grown up around that corner.

The Potter connection, accurately. Rowling wrote much of the early books in cafés a few minutes' walk from here, and the kirkyard has become a fixture of Potter walking tours because of the names cut into its stones. The most visited is the grave of Thomas Riddell, who died in 1806 aged 72, and whose son of the same name is commemorated on the same monument. There is also a memorial to William McGonagall, the Dundee poet celebrated for the awfulness of his verse, installed in the 1990s over his previously unmarked grave; Rowling has said she took the surname McGonagall from him. Other stones bear names that echo the books to varying degrees, and George Heriot's School over the wall — founded on a 1620s bequest, with pupils divided into four houses — is often cited as a Hogwarts model. It is worth keeping the register honest: some of these links are documented statements by the author, some are plausible absorption, and some are tour-guide embroidery. The graves themselves are real burials of real people.

Greyfriars Bobby. Near the northern gate is a small stone for a Skye terrier said to have kept watch by his master's grave from 1858 until his own death in 1872. The bronze statue at the top of Candlemaker Row, by William Brodie, was unveiled the following year and is now one of the most photographed objects in the city. Rubbing the dog's nose is a modern invention that has stripped the patina and required repeated repair; the council and conservators have asked people to stop.

What you actually see today. The kirkyard is a first-rank collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century funerary sculpture — winged souls, skulls, hourglasses, trade symbols and elaborate classical wall monuments, many now weathered to lace. Look for the mortsafes and the watch-house near the entrance: heavy iron cages and a guard post installed against body-snatchers in the 1810s and 1820s, when Edinburgh's anatomy schools created a market that Burke and Hare later served by murder. The kirk interior, open at limited hours, contains a fine seventeenth-century interior and memorial glass.

Getting there and timing. It is a five-minute walk from the Royal Mile, the National Museum of Scotland and the Grassmarket, and about fifteen minutes from Waverley station. Gates open daily and close in the late afternoon in winter, later in summer. Early morning is by far the best time: tour groups arrive from mid-morning and the narrow terraces become congested. Evening ghost tours run year round.

Practical notes. This is a working burial ground and a scheduled historic site, not an attraction. Leaving pens, notes, tokens or chalk on the Riddell stone damages the sandstone and is actively discouraged; volunteers clear it repeatedly. Paths are cobbled, uneven and sloping, with steps at several entrances, which makes wheelchair access difficult. There are no toilets or café on site, though both are available at the museum across the street. Photography is fine; treat the place as you would any cemetery.