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Friar's Bush Graveyard, located on the Stranmillis Road in South Belfast, is Belfast's oldest Christian burial site and geologically may date from much earlier as a mound in the graveyard is believed to be of Neolithic age. [1] [2] located on the Stranmillis Road in South Belfast. It had a B1 listed status. [3]
Among the many trees found in the cemetery and ancient Irish yews, ash, maple and in the oldest part, chestnut. [4]
The majority of the historic headstones are made from sandstone and have, according to an academic study in 1983, badly weathered or broken. [5] Since that study basic maintenance in the cemetery has done little to improve the situation.
Written evidence for the pre-Ulster Plantation history is hard to source, although there is some pictorial evidence or representation of the graveyard's location in a 1570 map. [6] Today the site covers almost two acres and inside there is a obvious visual difference between the older part, furthest away from the Stranmillis Road, and a new section gifted in 1828 "from the Marquis of Donegall to mark Catholic Emancipation. [7]
The Belfast born poet Joseph Campbell (poet), often given to romantic exaggeration in his work, wrote of the cemetery:
In Penal times, as peasents tell,
A friar came with book and bell
To chant his Mass each Sabbath morn,
Beneath Stranmillis trysting thorn. [8]
The oldest headstone in the cemetery was erected to the memory of Thomas Gibson who died in 1717. In the 1820s and 1830s the cemetery was occasionally targeted by body-snatchers. In 1823 the bodies of a woman and a child were stolen from the graveyard, although later returned. [1]
The cemetery is the resting place of thousands of victims of the Cholera epidemic of the 1830s and the Great Irish famine of the 1840s. [1] These people were buried in a mound dubbed 'Plaguey Hill', which is located just inside the cemetery's main gates. [9] Also located inside the graveyard's main gates is the "Pauper's Pit", which is the resting place of those too poor to afford a headstone. By the mid 19th-century, the cemetery was becoming overcrowded, and only families with burial rights were allowed to be interred, [9] and in 1869 it was replaced by Milltown Cemetery as the city's main Catholic burial site. [1]
The graveyard is the resting place of the famed baker and philanthropist Bernard (Barney) Hughes who died in 1878. [10]
Andrew Joseph McKenna, the Cavan-born journalist who founded The Northern Star newspaper - a title chosen to evoke the more famous newspaper of the same name from the 18th century Northern Star (newspaper of the Society of United Irishmen) - to advance the liberal cause in Belfast was buried here in 1872. A large Gothic monument was later erected by public subscription. [11] [12]
The harpist Valentine Rennie, who played for King George IV in Dublin Castle in 1821, was buried in the cemetery in 1837. [13] [14]
Since 2000 Friar's Bush has been maintained by the Belfast City Council, having previously been the property of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor. An information board outside the cemetery contains some of the key historical elements of the story of the cemetery, as seen in recent pictures. [15]
There are a variety of groups offering tours of the cemetery and committed to the preservation and enhancement of his historic site. [16] [17]
Patrick Carlin VC, of Belfast, County Antrim, was an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Henry Joy McCracken was an Irish republican executed in Belfast for his part in leading United Irishmen in the Rebellion of 1798. Convinced that the cause of representative government in Ireland could not be advanced under the British Crown, McCracken had sought to forge a revolutionary union between his fellow Presbyterians in Ulster and the country's largely dispossessed Catholic majority. In June 1798, following reports of risings in Leinster, he seized the initiative from a leadership that hesitated to act without French assistance and led a rebel force against a British garrison in Antrim Town. Defeated, he was returned to Belfast where he was court-martialled and hanged.
The Milltown Cemetery attack took place on 16 March 1988 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the large funeral of three Provisional IRA members killed in Gibraltar, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, Michael Stone, attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols. He had learned there would be no police or armed IRA members at the cemetery. As Stone then ran towards the nearby motorway, a large crowd chased him and he continued shooting and throwing grenades. Some of the crowd caught Stone and beat him, but he was rescued by the police and arrested. Three people were killed and more than 60 wounded.
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Milltown Cemetery is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and the M1 motorway.
Belfast City Cemetery is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and Springfield Road, near Milltown Cemetery. Burial records have been fully digitized and are searchable online.
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Stranmillis is an area in south Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is also an electoral ward for Belfast City Council, part of the Laganbank district electoral area. As part of the Queen's Quarter, it is the location for prominent attractions such as the Ulster Museum and Botanic Gardens. The area is located on Stranmillis Road, with Malone Road to the west and the River Lagan to the east. Its name, meaning "the sweet stream" in Irish, refers to the Lagan, whose waters are still fresh at this point, before becoming brackish as the river flows onward toward its mouth in Belfast Lough.
Queen's Quarter is the southernmost quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland and named after Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland's largest university. The Quarter is centred on the Lanyon Building, the University's most prominent building, designed by architect Sir Charles Lanyon, while Botanic Avenue, Stranmillis Road, University Road and Malone Road are the main thoroughfares through the area. The Quarter encompasses a region bounded by the Ormeau Road, the Holylands and Stranmillis Embankment to the east and the Lisburn Road to the west.
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