Kilbegs Cemetery

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A rectangular graveyard with enclosed walls of basalt rubble. Entrance faces north.

Entrance piers are circular with shallow conical cement rendered caps; modern iron gate with spear heads, mounted on a modern square section steel post with finial. Concrete copings of saddle back form to front boundary wall.
Front boundary wall coursed; other walls roughly coursed in parts, otherwise of uncoursed rubble construction.
East boundary wall at south end has been later raised to form a segmental gable of an outbuilding of the adjoining property.
Interior of graveyard is roughly grassed, with a number of mature yew trees, and contains a number of headstones and some cast iron railings to enclosures, none of any special architectural interest.
Memorials date from at least as early as 1807.

SETTING: The graveyard stands in a very rural area in the midst of open agricultural land. It faces the road and is set back from it slightly with a grass verge in front.

Historical information

Provided by Lord O'Neill c 1803-4 as a new graveyard following his closure of the private burial ground within Shane's Castle park; precise date of opening not known but the latest memorial slab noted in the old burial ground dates from 1802 and the earliest noted in the new graveyard dates from 1807; the old village of Edenduffcarrick, adjacent to Shane's Castle was cleared away in 1803-4, so the new graveyard probably dates from the same year. On the OS maps of 1829 & 32, and 1858, it is marked as 'Shane's Castle New Grave Yard', but on subsequent maps it is simply marked as 'Cemetery'.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1829 & 32, Co Antrim 49 (marked as 'Shane's Castle New Grave Yard').
2. OS Map 1858, Co Antrim 49 (marked as 'Shane's Castle New Grave Yard').
3. OS Map 1902, Co Antrim 49 (marked as 'Cemetery').
4. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 19: Parishes of County Antrim VI, 1830, 1833, 1835-8 (Belfast, 1993), pp 62-3.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This is a graveyard of some local interest but of no special architectural or historic interest.