MANY may drive past a part of Greenock on a daily basis perhaps not realising what’s behind its high walls.

I refer to the old cemetery in Inverkip Street which opened in 1787.

Greenock’s population would subsequently grow and the cemetery would soon run out of ground for burials.

In 1816, the Town Council made an application which permitted the cemetery to be extended to Duncan Street.

It was fortunate the additional ground was acquired.

Referring to the 1800s, R M Smith’s History of Greenock states: “In the early years of the third decade the town was literally ravaged by successive epidemics of fever, smallpox and cholera.”

The author describes the cholera outbreak which hit the town in 1832 as having ‘carried off 2,000 persons in addition to the ordinary death rate’.

I understand the last burial in the Inverkip Street cemetery took place in 1955.

In 1976 a petition by Inverclyde District Council to have the cemetery closed for further interments was approved at a hearing in the Sheriff Court.

Buried in the cemetery are the novelist John Galt, who also founded the Canadian town of Goderich in Ontario, and Sir Gabriel Wood who bequeathed his entire estate to establish the Mariners’ Home in Newark Street.

Galt is remembered by a plaque next to the cemetery gates in Inverkip Street and the adjacent River Clyde Homes John Galt House sheltered living complex.