It was established in 1878 by the Metropolitan Cemetery Company,[citation needed] originally just outwith the then city boundary, the nearest suburb then being Morningside.

Sir Edward Victor Appleton GBE KCB FRS (6 September 1892 – 21 April 1965) who was an English physicist, Nobel Prize winner (1947) and pioneer in radiophysics is also buried here.

However, although the entrance gates and railings still exist, this route is now blocked, a modern housing development, Belhaven Place, standing over the graveyard, in defiance of cemetery legislation.

Apart from a central avenue of trees on the main east–west path the landscape is undramatic and unstructured, and lacks the atmosphere of its predecessors, such as Dean Cemetery.

One section lies almost detached, to the south-east, accessed through a pathway between the modern housing developments, isolated as an ignoble peninsula.

Unusually two war graves are of female victims (both from the ATS): Margaret White Walker (1922-1945) and Jean Dewar Scougall (1921-1943).