Entrance and wall of graveyard

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

An irregular-shaped graveyard with a Tudor arched sandstone entrance. Entrance faces west.

Gateway is of sandstone ashlar flanked by diagonal buttresses; projecting plinth with moulded weathering; moulded weatherings to two-stage buttresses. Chamfered arch in three stages has a deeply moulded hood with large carved head stops; late Gothic foliage carved in spandrel panels; archway surmounted by a crenellated parapet which rises to a small central gable; Gothic panelled pinnacles to each extremity of parapet, rising from moulded corner corbels; top of finial on north side missing. Archway contains a pair of double gates of cast iron, which have cusped panelling in Perpendicular Gothic style, with spear-headed finials.

Gateway flanked to each side by snecked basalt wing walls, curved forward at the ends and continuing to each side to form the front boundary walls of lower height, which end at the extremities with large square piers, with moulded sandstone caps and large octagonal finials.
Wing walls and front boundary walling capped by moulded sandstone copings, with raised moulded copings to the extremities of the wings.
Extending beyond each end pier are short set-back boundary retaining walls of basalt rubble.

Inside the gates the graveyard rises rapidly in level, approached by a flight of stone steps bordered by modern wooden rails; beyond the wing walls the level is raised, with front boundary walling acting as retaining walls.
Rear face of archway is of ashlar, unornamented.
Rear face of wing walls to each side is of basalt rubble.
Graveyard is grassed over, of uneven surface: contains a number of headstones and iron railed enclosures, none of any special architectural merit. Oldest grave noted is dated 1751; others are mainly of 19th century date.
Boundary walls to each side and rear are of basalt rubble with granite copings to western portions and basalt rock copings to the eastern parts.

SETTING: The graveyard stands in a rural area facing the main road with a pavement across the front. Mature trees surround it to the sides and rear. Directly facing the main entrance on the opposite side of the road is a 19th century house with Tudor-arched openings (HB20/13/004).

Historical information

Precise date of entrance and wall of graveyard not known but the present outline of boundary walling appears on the OS map of 1857; they were not erected until after 1838; stylistically the gateway dates from the 1840s, and may be attributed to the architect Charles Lanyon who was responsible for the design of St Jude's Church of Ireland church of 1839-41 nearby.
The graveyard itself is of long-standing, being referred to by the Ordnance Survey Memoirs in the 1830s as "a very ancient burial ground". The same source also described what it called 'Muckamore graveyard' as follows: "it is the principal place of interment for the neighbourhood and is used as such by all classes and persuasions, but no particular family nor one of any note are interred in it. There are not any carved or sculpted slates, nor any of antiquity, the oldest inscription which can be traced being that of 1717 … This burial ground is not in the charge of anyone. It is consequently in a most neglected confused and irregular state, grown over with weeds and brambles, badly enclosed and without a gate in its entrance. It is said that there had been one, but that it had been removed in order to remove the only grounds upon which a claim for levying tithes from the grange could be founded."
The structure lies within the area of an historic monument, no. ANT50:76.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 50 (marked as 'Grave Yard').
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 50 (a slight change in the delineation of the boundary at the south-west corner suggests the present boundary wall was built subsequent to the 1832 OS map).
3. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Vol 35: Parishes of County Antrim XIII, 1833, 1835, 1838 (Belfast, 1996), p 70.
Secondary Sources
1. UAHS, Antrim and Ballymena (Belfast, 1969), p 13.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is an early Victorian entrance gateway and front boundary wall designed in a well proportioned Tudor Revivalist style displaying some well executed sculptural elements. It enjoys a pleasant and unspoiled setting, in association with a burial ground of some antiquity