GRAVEYARD

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A pre 1600 ancient burial place located on the east side of Church Road at a junction with a minor road leading to Tully Road. Random rubble stone boundary walls to all four sides and dressed rubble stone piers with cast iron metal gates to entrance on NW side.

There are two memorials commemorating Col Adam Murray and John Mitchelburne.

The Murray Memorial consists of a plain stone low plinth wall with painted cast iron railings above. The four sides have circular section vertical bars with a decorative band above. Each vertical bar culminates in a decorative finial. Crossed swords are located at the corners on the shorter sides. A metal pike is located at the top of each corner.
Located within the enclosure is a stone memorial, square on plan with a plain square base below a battered sided short pillar which is topped by astone pyramidal cap. A stone urn sits atop the cap (top missing). Carved stone inscriptions to all four sides of the short pillar.

The Mitchelburne Memorial is also enclosed on all four sides by painted cast iron railings of circular section vertical bars, topped by decorative finials, ,all rising from a low stone plinth wall. Like the Murray Memorial, a metal pike is located at the top of each corner. The memorial within the railings is a large rectangular marble structure with inscribed marble panels to the sides, decorative circular pilasters to the four corners under a plain stone top with rounded edges.

Historical information

This ancient burial place is located on the east side of Church Road at a junction with a minor road leading to Tully Road. The entrance is through a cast iron gate flanked by pillars of dressed stone fronting on to Church Road. This was once the site of a medieval parish church. At the beginning of the 1600s it was in ruins, but was subsequently repaired by John Freeman, the ‘farmer’ of the proportion allotted to the Goldsmith’s Company of London, who re-roofed and slated the church by c.1617. The ‘Royal Visitation’ of 1622 stated that the church had been ‘re-edified by ye company of Goldsmiths’.

In 1693 it was noted that the church had been burned by King James’s army, but had been rebuilt in that year by the bishop, dean and parishioners. The site was abandoned in the 1750s when a new church was built on a new site several miles away. The old church was allowed to fall into ruins and was noted as such when Rev. Daniel Beaufort passed by it in November 1787 while on a tour round Ireland. By the 1830s when the Ordnance Survey memoir of the parish was being drafted, only the foundations of the old church remained.

The oldest gravestones with legible inscriptions are two ledgers positioned side by side which commemorate James Orneal (d. 1671) and John Orneal (d. 1672). As is typical of the time, the inscriptions run round the margins of the stones. It is possible that Orneal is an anglicisation of the Irish surname O’Neill. Another gravestone dating from the seventeenth century, and which also has the inscription running around the margins of the stone, commemorates John Duglish senior who died in 1687 and John Duglish junior who died in 1694 (old style). It features a coat of arms and a skull and crossed bones. Duglish is presumably a variant of Douglas.

Among the most interesting memorials are those to Mitchelburne and Murray, two of the prominent defenders of Derry during the siege of 1689. Mitchelburne was of English background. His memorial states that he was the son of Sir Richard Mitchelburn of Broadhurst and Stanmore in Sussex. He died in 1721. In 1836 a deputation from the Honourable the Irish Society visited this graveyard and found Mitchelburn’s gravestone broken into fragments and the inscription almost obliterated. In response a new memorial designed by William Tite, and bearing the original inscription, was erected.

The following year the Irish Society erected a monument over the grave of Col. Adam Murray of Ling. Murray’s origins can be traced to near Selkirk in the Borders region of Scotland (where, in the old churchyard, a headstone bears his name). Commemorated on the same monument as Murray in Glendermott is James Murray of Clooney (d. 1871) ‘a lineal descendant of Colonel Adam Murray and the last in the male line (Irish branch) of the ancient houses of Falahill and Philiphaugh’.

References

Primary sources
1. PRONI, Beaufort’s Journal, 1787-88, MIC250/1
2. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1830, OS/6/5/20/1
3. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1905, OS/6/5/22/3
4. PRONI, Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1925, OS/6/5/22/4
5. NIEA, HB Records

Secondary sources
1. J. B. Leslie, Derry Clergy and Parishes (Enniskillen, 1937)
2. James Stevens Curl, The Londonderry Plantation, 1609-1914 (Chichester, 1986)
3. Marjorie Todd and David Todd, Register of gravestones in Old Glendermott Burial Ground, Church Road, Londonderry (c. 1988)

Online sources
1. Dictionary of Irish Architects (www.dia.ie)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
U. Historic Associations
V. Authorship
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest

Evaluation

Two memorials to Mitchelburne and Murray, prominent defenders of Derry during the siege of 1689, located within the Clondermot Graveyard on the east side of Church Road at a junction with Tully Road. The Murray Memorial consists of a plain stone low plinth wall with painted cast iron railings above including crossed swords and metal pikes at each corner. Located within the enclosure is a stone memorial with carved stone inscriptions. The Mitchelburne Memorial has a similar railed enclosure with a large rectangular marble structure within. Both memorials are of historical significance in Northern Ireland with their connections to The Siege of Derry and to The Honourable The Irish Society.