Watch House at Donegore Parish Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single storey gabled rectangular building of basalt rubble with a stone roof of coved form. Entrance faces east.

Entrance elevation has a single opening, a central doorway recessed between nib walls of basalt rubble with a large slab of basalt as a lintel; copings to nibs are loose. Entrance contains an original iron barred gate in very rusted condition. Roof consists of basalt field stones and basalt rubble bonded with recent rough cement work, with some grass clumps still remaining from previous overall grass covering.

Rectangular plaque set in wall to right-hand side of entrance, inscribed '1832. This Vault was erected by Public Subscription, the Ground a gift from John Beck of Belfast.'

Walls have roughly squared quoins.

Gables and rear wall each contain a single central small narrow window opening, unglazed. Abutting south gable are plain iron railings to each extremity, returning at the main south boundary of the churchyard to form a small burial enclosure to the Beck family. Abutting the north gable is the western boundary wall of the churchyard.

SETTING: The building stands in the south-west corner of the graveyard of Donegore Parish Church (HB20/06/003A). Its front overlooks the graveyard, while its north gable and rear wall form part of the boundary of the rear garden of an adjacent house. The area is very rural and the immediate surroundings are grassy.

Historical information

Built in 1832, by public subscription, on ground given by John Beck of Belfast, as a corpse house or vault in which bodies could be protected from body-snatchers who tried to secure bodies to sell for medical research.

Prior to the building of it, new corpses had to be watched over constantly until they were no longer of any use for dissection, as one 19th century historian recorded: "The last time I was in Donegore churchyard, I heard an old man say that in the year 1829 he was engaged two nights a week during a month watching a corpse, others performing the duty when he was absent." Because of the inconvenience involved in countering the threat of body-snatchers at the time, the decision was taken in 1829 to erect two vaults in the area, one in Donegore and one in Kilbride, at an overall cost of £20. In relation to the one in the Presbyterian graveyard at Kilbride, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs in 1838 stated that it was built "as a protection vault, to prevent exhumation. The dead bodies are deposited in this vault for 6 weeks before interment."

Ironically, the year the two vaults were built, 1832, saw the passing of the Anatomy Act which allowed the bodies of paupers in workhouses and hospitals to be confiscated and used for dissection, thus bringing an end to the body-snatchers' trade.
This building lies within the area of an historic monument, no. ANT50:47.

References – Primary Sources
1. Inscription on the building.
2. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 29: Parishes of County Antrim XI, 1832-3, 1835-9 (Belfast, 1995), p 153 (reference to the parallel example at Kilbride, Co Antrim).
3. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50.

Secondary Sources
1. M. Bell, A History of St John's Church, Donegore (Antrim, 1988), pp 10, 63-4.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

D. Plan Form
F. Structural System
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

W. Northern Ireland/International Interest
Z. Rarity
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

This is an early 19th century vault built to protect corpses from body-snatchers. It is an unusual instance of stone-vaulted construction in the 19th century, apparently unchanged inside or out, and is a rare example of its building type; as such, its interest goes beyond the merely local. It stands as an important testimony of a notorious period in medical and social history just prior to the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832 which rendered the body-snatchers' trade obsolete.