‘More trouble than Coventry Cathedral’: The Architectural Identity of Mortonhall Crematorium, Edinburgh 1961-67.

In 1962 architect Sir Basil Spence wrote to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh that the Mortonhall Crematorium ‘job is giving me more trouble than Coventry Cathedral’.
The postwar period in Scotland witnessed Modernist architecture becoming inextricably linked with ambitious utopian visions representing a new social order based on equality and improvement, whether for the living or the dead. Glasgow and the West had set the bar high in terms of progressive crematorium building during the 1960s – its record was remarkable – Scotland’s first crematorium, Maryhill opened in 1895 and Daldowie, Craigton and The Linn all completed by 1962. Edinburgh might have been hard pressed to match this achievement had it not responded by commissioning the internationally renowned Sir Basil Spence. The result was one of the finest crematorium designs in Europe. The story of Mortonhall, illustrates very eloquently, the arguments and compromises over costs that architects often had to face to produce civic buildings of quality that identified the visions and values of an urban society and culture. This paper chronicles the architect’s quest to create not only ‘a dignified and austere crematorium for the city of Edinburgh’ but also to ‘get the best crematorium in Britain’.