Milltown Cemetery: The History of Belfast, Written In Stone, Book 2

By Tom Hartley

‘Milltown has much to tell us about Belfast’s chequered past, whatever our religion or politics. Our history is bigger than our tribe.’

Milltown Cemetery, the burying ground for the Catholic community in Belfast for almost 150 years, is one of Belfast’s most significant landmarks.

Thousands of people come to the cemetery every year, some to reconnect with their family history, others drawn to the extraordinary stories of the people buried there. Mill workers,

labourers, clergy, Italian immigrants, victims of the Blitz, soldiers of the First and Second World Wars, political activists, IRA volunteers, republicans, victims of the Troubles – Milltown’s graves are a historical record of the social, religious and political life ofBelfast over two centuries.

In this book, Tom Hartley, leading authority on the graveyard, guides the reader around Milltown. With over one hundred photographs, and detailed entries on over three hundred noteworthy graves, this is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to know more about Belfast and its people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9780856407338

Tom Hartley

Tom Hartley was born in Belfast in 1945 and has been active in politics for over forty years. He was both the General Secretary and National Chairperson of Sinn Féin, and in May 1993 he was elected to Belfast City Council, where he chaired several Council committees, including the Arts and Tourism sub-committees and the Policy and Resources committee. From 2008 to 2009 he was lord mayor of Belfast. He retired from the Council in September 2013 after twenty years service to the citizens of Belfast. In his spare time, Tom pursues his love of history and interest in the environment by organising historical walks through Belfast City Cemetery for Féile an Phobail. He works to highlight the importance of our burial sites as a repository of the political, social and economic history of Belfast. He is the author of the bestselling Written in Stone series - Milltown Cemetery and Belfast City Cemetery.

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PREFACE

When I was a boy in west Belfast I was able, along with all the other kids in my street, to range far and wide across the landscape surrounding our homes. Our playgrounds extended above the city, to the Black and Divis mountains, and down to the lowlying Bog Meadows. The latter, on the edge of St James’ district, was the last inner-city remnants of the swamps and mud flats of the Lagan basin. We loved to go into the Bog Meadows to watch the swans that flocked to its many pools, and when we did, we were only separated from the bottom end of Milltown Cemetery by a rickety fence and a small swathe of waterlogged land. The Bog Meadows effortlessly merged into the lower reaches of the cemetery.

A sprawling tract of land, criss-crossed by pathways and dominated by headstones, the cemetery sloped uphill towards the Falls Road and the Black Mountain. For us kids, the grass of the cemetery gave the impression that the grassy land we stood on continued unbroken right up to the base of the mountain. Of course, this was not the case; Milltown is very much an integral part of the landscape of urban west Belfast. Every day thousands travel past its gates, which are situated right at the top of the Falls Road, where it forks to become the Andersonstown and Glen Roads. Many of those who pass its front gate will have attended a burial in Milltown. They will know that their family history is a small part of the Milltown story.

But Milltown is more than the family stories of the Catholic and nationalist community in Belfast – in its long history, it has become part of the political story. Before the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, heavily-guarded funerals of RIC members were common there and, during the Troubles, state surveillance of mourners was the norm. Right up until the late 1990s, the RUC and British army literally watched over Milltown from a nearby vantage point. The centre of the ‘Y’ shaped junction between the Falls, Andersonstown and Glen Roads was dominated by Andersonstown RUC barracks. An imposing outpost in the heart of a strongly republican and nationalist area, its distinctive watchtower sprouted with an array of optical military technology designed to capture images of those attending funerals.

Aerial photo of Milltown Cemetery, 1967

The republican dead were often commemorated at the cemetery in political speeches by key historical figures, particularly during the numerous memorials held every Easter Sunday. Over the last decades of the twentieth century, funerals were often surrounded by a ring of RUC and British army riot squads. The 1988 attack by loyalist Michael Stone on republican mourners was reported in the world’s media. The trauma of conflict can be seen on the inscriptions carried on many family headstones dating from the 1920s through to the recent past. Many other headstones of those who lost their lives in conflict carry only their names and dates without any reference to the brutal circumstance of death. The story of the cemetery I will recount in this book does not centre on conflict, even though this may be the source of the most traumatic and difficult memories from the recent past, yet I cannot fail to touch on it either.

Since the end of the Troubles, the cemetery and its story (as well as the once deplorable physical state of the grounds) have been highlighted in the local media. This is thanks, in part, to a campaign by local women to expose the transfer of a piece of its land, a burial ground for infants, to the Ulster Wildlife Trust. Thousands of children were buried in such graves within Milltown, indicating the high infant mortality rate throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their graves reflect the big killers of their times: flu epidemics, tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlatina, diphtheria, and diarrhoea.

The vast majority of people who are buried in Milltown are ordinary but they lived through extraordinary times. They are like my father and mother and other members of my family who are buried there – the millworkers, weavers and labourers of the working class. Belfast people showed remarkable courage and resilience in meeting and frequently rising above the hardship of their daily lives. Not all have headstones. Some, like the thousands in the various Poor Ground sections, do not even have marked graves.

It is impossible to do justice to every story, to every memorial, to every person out of the thousands who are interred there. But it is possible to see the historical power of a community as it engaged with the history of Ireland and Britain in the decades since the cemetery opened. Milltown is the beginning and end of many stories. It is a cemetery like no other.

This is my second book on the two cemeteries that straddle the upper reaches of the Falls Road. Both may be used as guides for visitors to the cemeteries, as well as stand-alone histories. In the preface to the first of those books, Belfast City Cemetery, I wrote that visitors may either like or dislike the history they encounter, and that they can agree or disagree with the politics of those who lie buried in the graves they visit. Those buried in City Cemetery are Catholic and Protestant, unionist and republican, while in Milltown, which was established by the Catholic Church, there is only one Protestant (his story is told in Chapter 7). Still, Milltown does have just as much as the City Cemetery to tell us about Belfast’s chequered past, whatever one’s religion or politics. Our history is bigger than our tribe.

With the completion of this book I am again conscious of the wonderful complexity of the Belfast story. In the lives of those buried in Milltown, we continue to find the remarkable stories of people whose existence enriched the lives of their families, their friends and their communities. They come from every walk of life and every level of society. Many of them battled against political and social forces that sought to limit their vision and their ambitions. They were active across the spectrum of political movements. For many, poverty and a lack of education stimulated a desire for a better life. For others, the need to better themselves took them far away from Belfast. Yet many returned to the city of their birth.

Above all else, the story of Milltown can only be truly told if it is located within a Belfast narrative. Set alongside the story of Belfast industrialists and the Belfast unionist and Protestant community, the stories found in Milltown bring depth and colour to the dynamic narrative that constitutes the history of Belfast. Crossing social, cultural, class and religious boundaries, it is a story that enhances our common ownership of a dynamic and often troubled city history. Its legacy is to all of Belfast, all Béal Feirstigh.

Of the range of historical strands that constitute the story of Milltown cemetery, two dominate. One is the political story associated with the lives of many who are buried there; the other is the expansion of the institutions and influence of the Catholic Church in Belfast towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Politics shape the narrative of Milltown Cemetery. We cannot avoid the tragedy of those killed in periods of political conflict. The headstones confront us with the brutal reality of rebellion and resistance, from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin at Easter 1916, to the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War. Irish history is full of men and women of vision – though the roles of important women tend to be downplayed – and when we see their headstones in Milltown, we begin to hear their stories.

We also cannot avoid the historical complexity to be found here, evident in the list of Catholic members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), killed in Belfast between 1920 and 1922, and who are interred in individual graves. Evident too in the story of a Free State soldier shot in Dublin during the Irish Civil War, a war that saw friend become foe in a matter of months. While that dynamic of friend and foe shapes the political story and the street tensions of the city’s nationalist and republican communities, Milltown’s graves also serve as strong reminders of a connection to the British Empire through the soldiering experience of Belfast men in the British army.

Like most other large burial grounds, the story of the poor is hidden from our view. Their graves are part of an anonymous mass. Without headstones, their lives remain out of sight, even though they constitute 38 per cent of those buried in the cemetery.

But the story of Milltown is also the story of artists and painters, musicians and craftsmen, of architects, harp makers and uilleann pipers, and it is the story of sports through the lives of footballers and hurlers.

The second dominant narrative of Milltown is the expansion of Catholic institutions in Belfast at the end of the nineteenth century. Spearheaded by Patrick Dorrian, the Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, this period saw the establishment of schools, new churches, and the introduction of orders of Sisters and Brothers into the city to cater for the religious, social and educational needs of Belfast Catholics. The expansion of church power is represented by the numerous plots of religious communities, and the large number of priests from Belfast parishes who are buried near the entrance to the cemetery.

Dorrian was the driving force in securing a new burial ground for the Catholics of Belfast. A native of Downpatrick, County Down, he came to Belfast as a new curate in 1837, when the Catholic population was just under 20,000. At the time of his death in 1885, it had risen to over 60,000. A dynamic and energetic bishop, he can be credited with the transformation of the Catholic Church in Victorian Belfast. His role as Bishop of Down and Connor arguably had a significant social and political impact on the psychology of Belfast Catholics. While the transformation process he initiated was manifested as infrastructural growth, it was aligned with a corresponding growth in Catholic Church influence inside the predominantly Protestant city of Belfast. At a political and social level, it represented a key element of an historical process by which Catholics sought to secure a foothold in the civic and political structures of the city, which was then dominated by unionism. In the political sphere, this historical process was deeply complicated by the partition of Ireland. It would take another seventy years before the Catholic population of Belfast, through the Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement, 1998), would secure the means to achieve full equality in the civic and political life of the city.

Milltown is also the burial ground of my family extending back several generations. It is the burial ground too of many people who came from my ancestral villages – my mother’s family come from Belturbet, my father’s family from Bellaghy – in search of a new life in Belfast.

For me, a walk through Milltown opens up this personal story. When I think of an aunt or an uncle who died at a young age, I am left with intense but simple curiosities: What did they look like? What family features did they have? Did they have the same colour of eyes as my father, or the same shape of his mouth? By eliciting questions like these, Milltown’s power as a site of memory begins to become apparent.

These most basic human curiosities about those buried in the cemetery bring out more complex questions of history and politics. Why did people, including my ancestors, move to this city? What challenges did they face? How did their struggles shape the city as it is today? The story of one headstone leads naturally to another as we see the connections multiply with every question. In this book, I hope to reveal the complexity of Belfast’s story through these connections. The choice of whose stories to tell is inevitably subjective and partial, but taken together I believe the stories herein represent our wider story.

CHAPTER 1

BELFAST CORPORATION AND THE NEW CATHOLIC CEMETERY

Prior to the opening of Belfast Cemetery on 1 August 1869, the cemeteries of Belfast were associated with churches, or with institutions such as the workhouse, or the Belfast Charitable Society in Clifton Street. But at the start of the nineteenth century a new cemetery model, originating in France, changed the way Belfast institutions buried their dead.

The 1804 opening of the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris – a large, well-designed cemetery – signalled the spread across Europe of a movement for cemeteries designed to incorporate new concepts of hygiene, decorative landscaping and well-planned layout. By the 1820s and 1830s, new cemeteries based on this model were established in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin. As with most cemeteries of nineteenth century Britain and Ireland, their design and construction was financed by the sale of graves.

The concepts that underpinned the establishment of the new style of graveyards in Belfast were expressed in three local parliamentary acts. The Belfast Corporation Act, 21 July 1845 prohibited the making or opening of a new cemetery within the limits of the Belfast Borough without authorisation from the civil authorities. A further act in 1856 stipulated the responsibility of civic burial boards for the burying of the dead, which should only exist within the limits or boundaries of any borough, or the Town Council of any borough. The Belfast Burial Ground Act, 1866 allowed for the setting up of a municipal cemetery outside the city boundaries of Belfast in the townland of Ballymurphy. It was the intention of the Belfast Corporation, today Belfast City Council, in 1866 to establish one cemetery that would be used by all the citizens of Belfast. On 10 December 1866 the Belfast Corporation purchased 101 acres of land on the Falls Road from the Sinclair family; 44 acres of this land were allocated for the new municipal cemetery that would become Belfast Cemetery (later known as Belfast City Cemetery).

Townland of Ballymurphy, c. 1830

The provision of a new municipal cemetery had implications for the Catholic community. One of their main areas of concern was the condition of the ancient Friar’s Bush burial ground located on the slopes of Malone Ridge (now the Stranmillis Road in South Belfast). Friar’s Bush had been purchased from the Marquis of Donegall on 29 May 1829 by the Bishop of Down and Connor, William Crolly.

The sale had been registered on 19 December 1833. One of the conditions of sale, included in the purchase documents, was the requirement to build a nine-foot high wall around the perimeter of this old burial ground. By 1869 the physical condition of the burial ground had degenerated as a result of lack of burial space, which meant burials on or near the surface. Remains were interred in burial mounds above ground level. The condition of Friar’s Bush prompted Bishop Dorrian in 1869 to enter into negotiations with the Belfast Corporation to secure a section of ground for Catholics in the new municipal burial ground. It was planned to close Friar’s Bush in August when the new municipal cemetery opened.

Milltown Cemetery, c. 1850

Dorrian is a key figure in the history of Milltown. He was born on 29 March 1814 in Downpatrick, County Down, one of the four sons of Patrick and Rose Dorrian who ran a general store in the town. He was educated at a private secondary school founded by the Revd James Neilson, a member of a well-known, liberal Presbyterian family. Dorrian entered St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, on 23 August 1833, and was ordained in Dublin’s Marlborough Street Cathedral on 23 September 1837. Shortly after he was appointed curate to the Parish of Belfast, where he took up residence at St Patrick’s Presbytery, Donegall Street. He remained in Belfast until 28 July 1847, when he was transferred to the parish of Loughlinisland, County Down, where he became parish priest. On 4 June 1860 he returned to Belfast as co-adjutor bishop and was consecrated in St Malachy’s, Belfast on 19 August 1860. He was made Bishop of Down and Connor on 13 July 1865, a position he held until his death at his residence in Chichester Park, Belfast, on 3 November 1885. He was buried in a tomb located within the chancel of St Patrick’s, Belfast.

In 1869, Bishop Dorrian reached an agreement with the corporation that Catholics would have their own 15 acre section in the new cemetery, a mortuary chapel and a separate Catholic entrance. Ten of these acres were to be set aside for poor ground. The arguments for a separate Catholic burial ground inside the new cemetery were based upon the principles of Catholic canon law on burial practice. For example, a still-born child, a person who commits suicide, an excommunicated person, or a Catholic who had bought a grave and subsequently converted to Protestantism, would not be buried in Catholic-blessed ground. Also agreed was the building of a sunken wall, running in a straight line from the front of the cemetery to the rear, which would segregate Catholic ground from the rest of the cemetery. One section of this underground wall was completed at a cost of £480 before the opening of the new Belfast Cemetery on 1 August 1869.

In early 1869, however, a dispute between Bishop Dorrian and the corporation erupted around the issue of who had the final say over those to be buried in the proposed Catholic section. The bishop wrote to the town clerk of the corporation inquiring about the limits of his powers in relation to Catholic burials. In his correspondence he pointed out that canon law prevented him from blessing burial ground unless he had the right to protect that ground from desecration.

By April 1869 it had become clear that the bishop was beginning to think in terms of a separate cemetery for Catholics. On Sunday 4 April, at a meeting in Belfast’s St Mary’s Church in Chapel Lane, he outlined his plans to rent or purchase from the corporation the fifteen acres agreed, or, failing this, to take a portion of ground outside the proposed boundary of the new cemetery. At the same meeting, he informed his audience that the matter of the cemetery would most likely have to go before the lord lieutenant and the Irish Privy Council. This was the first public indication that he was preparing a legal challenge against the Belfast Corporation. Following a resolution put to the meeting by a Mr James Keegan, a committee made up of leading Catholics was formed to help the bishop. Its membership included Bernard Hughes, Peter Keegan, John O’Neill, Patrick Griffith, Daniel Murphy, Dr Harkin, James Keegan, Constantine O’ Neill (HA-67/68.A), James Colligan, James O’ Kane, John Coyle, John Connors, W.J. Doherty, Bernard McGlade and Francis McDonnell. At the very close of the meeting, Bishop Dorrian suggested that if the Privy Council imposed conditions that he would not be justified in accepting, he would then propose that they should procure their own graveyard.

The underground wall in Belfast City Cemetery

The bishop’s offer to the corporation, to lease or buy the fifteen acres was quickly rejected by corporation. The dispute moved to Dublin Castle, where on 23 June 1869 the Irish Privy Council met to hear submissions from the Belfast Corporation on the closing of the existing burial grounds of Belfast. Unable to reach a conclusion on how the dispute would be resolved, the Privy Council adjourned until 3 July 1869. Within days, however, the bishop’s solicitor wrote to the Belfast Corporation listing five conditions required by the bishop before he could bless the Catholic burial ground:

The portion of ground so allotted shall at all times hereafter be, and continue to be, dedicated as a Roman Catholic burial-ground, and no part of it shall be ever applied to, or used for any purpose inconsistent with such dedication.

For the better and more effectual securing of the above, no portion of the ground so allotted shall ever be used for any purpose unless with the assent and approbation of the person for the time being exercising the functions of Roman Catholic Bishop in the place where such burial-ground is situated, and no interments shall take place within the limits of the ground so allotted upon without a certificate from such bishop or such-person as he may from time to time appoint; and all grants of rights of burial made by the burial board within the grounds so allotted shall be made subject to the above conditions authorised by him.

There shall be at all times appointed a sufficient number of grave diggers and other necessary attendants for the care of the grounds so allotted to Roman Catholics and no person shall be so appointed without the approbation of such bishop.

Out of the fees received by the Burial Board for interments in this portion of the burial-ground shall be allotted the remuneration of a Roman Catholic clergyman attending the burials therein, and the Burial Board shall also provide a suitable and sufficient chapel within the limits of such allotted ground for the celebration of the rites of burial according to the rules and usages of the Roman Catholic church.

That no soil shall be carted off or removed outside the consecrated portion of said ground without the consent in writing of said bishop for the time being.

When the cemetery committee of the corporation met on 30 June 1869, it rejected the majority of conditions in the letter. On 3 July the dispute again moved to the Irish Privy Council, where the legal representative of Bishop Dorrian, Isaac Butt, petitioned for a postponement of the closure of Friar’s Bush.

Butt was born in Glenfin, County Donegal on 6 September 1813. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, he became Professor of Political Economy there in 1836, and was called to the Bar in 1838. Initially, he supported the unionist opposition to Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Movement. The Famine in the 1840s, however, gave a new direction to his politics, and in 1847 he defended members of the republican Young Ireland organisation. He first entered Westminster in 1852 as MP for Harwich. In 1865 he defended members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and in 1870 he founded the Home Rule Movement. By 1871 he was MP for Limerick.

Butt hoped for a settlement between the corporation and the bishop, or failing that, for sufficient time to allow the bishop to initiate legal action aimed at forcing the corporation to accede to his demands. As a last resort, the bishop would have the time to purchase land for a new Catholic cemetery as a result of Butt’s work. Following Butt’s submission, the Privy Council decided to delay the closure of the Catholic burial ground at Friar’s Bush until 25 October 1869. The 3 July meeting of the Privy Council was quickly followed on 19 July by a meeting of the Cemetery Committee of the Belfast Corporation; again they refused to accede to the bishop’s demands.

The dispute between the bishop and the corporation dragged on until eventually a compromise was reached: the corporation could use the ground previously allocated for Catholic burials, while the bishop would be compensated £4,000 for releasing the corporation from its legal responsibility as a Burial Board to bury the Catholics.

By the time the new Belfast Cemetery opened on 1 August 1869, Bishop Dorrian had already begun negotiations with landowners James Ross and James Greer Bell for the purchase of fifteen acres of land in the locality of Milltown, on the far side of the Falls Road. On 12 October 1869, Bishop Dorrian purchased two acres, one rood and thirty-three perches of land from James Ross, and on 22 November eleven acres, one rood and thirty-four perches of land from James Greer Bell. The total cost for the two parcels of land was £4,100. He used eight acres of this land for the provision of the new burial ground.

Land sold by James Ross, 1869

At a meeting held in St Mary’s Church on Sunday, 7 November 1869, Bishop Dorrian gave an account of his dealing with the corporation and outlined his reasons for the purchase of land at Milltown. He explained to his audience how he had visited the Dublin cemetery of Glasnevin to discuss with its management the requirements for the administration of a cemetery and finished by stating that arrangements for burials could be made after 25 November 1869.

Land sold by James Greer Bell, 1869

When the cemetery opened on that date, its western boundary was the Falls Road; its northern boundary was the path that, today, begins at O’Neill and Co., the monumental stone masons; its eastern boundary was the outer edge of the poor ground (below the cemetery’s main avenue that, today, leads to the republican plots); its southern boundary, the stone wall on the Andersonstown side of the cemetery (about fifty yards from the cemetery office and running in the direction of the Bog Meadows). The layout for graves was a simple grid design. The standard portion of surface land required for a grave was fixed at 9ft by 4ft 6in; its depth was set at 7ft. Beginning at its western boundary on the Falls Road, rows of graves were laid out running on a north-south axis, with each grave facing east in the direction of the Bog Meadows. Spaces between the rows of graves were reserved to form the main avenue and paths. The new cemetery had eight sections.¹ On today’s map they are Sections 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 24, and 25. Section 24 was allocated as poor ground. The cost of a grave was £8 in a select position, £6 for a roadside grave, £3 for a grave in the second row, £2 for a grave in the third and fourth rows, and £1 for a grave at the centre of a section.

Section numbers, Milltown Cemetery

The first burial

Although Milltown was scheduled to open on 25 November 1869, the death of Father Patrick Clark, Administrator (ADM) of St Mary’s, Chapel Lane, on 15 November meant that the first burial actually took place on 17 November. Strangely, this is not recorded in the register of deaths. The first recorded burial was that of 29-year-old John Rafferty, 194 Argyle Street, Shankill Road, who was buried on 25 November 1869. From today’s perspective it seems ironic that the first recorded burial in Milltown was that of a Shankill Road man. By 31 January 2014, there were 196,463 people buried in the cemetery.

Blessing the land of the new cemetery

Blessing the land of the new cemetery took place on Sunday, 18 September 1870. In preparation for the religious ceremonies associated with this, a large marquee was erected in the centre of the new cemetery and five large wooden crosses were placed in different locations throughout. The largest of these was ten foot high; the other four were each six foot high. The ten foot cross was placed as near as possible to the centre of the new burial ground; another cross was placed near the gate in line with the ten foot cross; another directly in line to the rear of the ten foot cross; and the last two were placed directly to the far right and left of the larger cross.

At 11 a.m. the blessing ceremony began with Bishop Dorrian leading a procession of clergy out of the marquee to the central cross. There he lit three candles, which were placed upon the cross: one on the top and the other two on the right and left arms. The cross was sprinkled and blessed with holy water. He then led the procession to each of the other four crosses and around the boundaries of the cemetery. As each cross was reached, the ceremony of placing the candles and blessing them was repeated. This part of the ceremony ended with the chanting of Dominus Vobiscum and a solemn blessing to the people commencing with the words Sit omen Domini benedictum. The blessing of the crosses is similar to the ceremony for the consecration of a church. In a church, consecration crosses mark the points in the walls of a new church that have been blessed or anointed. Consecration is the way a new church is sanctified and dedicated to God. It marks the church as being separate from the space outside its walls and differentiates it from its surrounding buildings.

After the blessing of the crosses, the procession moved back to the marquee, where Mass was celebrated by Father Patrick Ryan of St Malachy’s Church, followed by a sermon from Dr Grimley, Bishop of the Cape of Good Hope. His sermon was the theme from the Epistle of St Paul to the Hebrews: ‘And as it is appointed unto men once to die’. The ceremony ended at 3 p.m. with a collection at the new entrance gate, which raised £300.

New entrance gate

The new entrance gate was designed by Timothy Hevey (OC-98.A), a leading church architect. The contractor was J&J Guiler, Builders of Belfast. The entrance was through an archway, 11ft 6in wide and 18ft high to the soffit or lower side of the arch. The arch was engraved with mouldings and its jambs were relieved with polished shafts of Tullamore limestone. The impost and capitals were carved by local stonemasons. Over the arch was a tympanum, left rough for a carving of the Resurrection; and still to this day in its rough state. Around the arch on its outer face was carved in Latin, Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venture saeculi, an inscription taken from the last two lines of the credo used at the Sunday mass, meaning, ‘And I await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’. The kneelers at the four angles on the coping stones were meant to have angels carved on them and were left in a rough state for that purpose; they too remain as uncut stone. The whole arch was surmounted by a cross thirty-five feet from the ground. The main stone used in the construction of the new archway was Scrabo stone with dressings from Dungannon and red stone from Dumfries in Scotland. The arch and cross lasted for one hundred and forty years before the trustees decided that the stone needed restoring. On Thursday 16 May 2013, the cross was replaced by a replica cross. This was the first stage in the restoration process. At 4 p.m. on Friday 16 August 2013 a new replica stone cross was erected by Ross Blasting & Elevation.

Milltown Cemetery, front gates

Land acquisition and sale, 1869–2010

In the years between 1869 and 1965, four parcels of land in the vicinity of Milltown were acquired by various bishops to enlarge the cemetery. The first was approximately 7.73 acres, purchased by Bishop Henry Henry from John McCance on 26 November 1906. This extended the cemetery southwards and eastwards. A further 17 acres were purchased in 1928, which extended the cemetery eastwards from the Poor Ground to the very centre of the Bog Meadows, with 8.52 acres of this land being used for burial ground. On 29 December 1933, Bishop Daniel Mageean bought 16 acres from Edmund Collins, extending the cemetery to its southern boundary with Maryburn Cottages, and to the centre of the Bog Meadows, though only 10.12 acres of this land has been used for burial ground. In 1965 the Belfast Corporation acquired a large tract of the Bog Meadows from Bishop Philbin, which they later used for the building of the M1 motorway. In return the bishop was given four parcels of land. One of these parcels, in total 6.83 acres, was used to extend the south-eastern corner of the cemetery. The eastern boundary of the cemetery now ran along a north-south axis parallel to the new motorway.

Dates of land purchase, 1869–1965

In the year 2000, the trustees of Milltown sold 37 acres of their land adjacent to the Bog Meadows to the Ulster Wildlife Trust for use as a wildlife sanctuary.

A section of this land included the Poor Ground in sections 63, 64, and 65. After a high-profile campaign by local people outraged by this sale – in particular the sale of land containing the graves of babies – the trustees bought back 6.2 acres from the Ulster Wildlife Trust on 16 May 2010. This last transaction fixed the present boundaries of the cemetery, which is now 55 acres.

Land acquisition and sales relating to Milltown Cemetery

From the first burial on 17 November 1869 until the end of December 2013 there were 196,463 burials in Milltown Cemetery. Of these, 75,540 were buried in the Poor Ground, and 120,923 in family graves.

Footnote

¹ When developing my map of the cemetery I decided to