Cemetery

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small cemetery set right on the coast less than 1 mile N of Millisle at the side of the Millisle Road. The plot measures roughly 60m x 23m and is surrounded on all sides by a low rubble wall which is now partly overgrown on the E (shore) side. The Millisle Road to the W is set at a higher level than the cemetery. The headstones are largely unremarkable, the oldest dating from 1848.

Historical information

This cemetery is shown on the OS Map of 1858-60 and (judging by the apparently earliest headstone), appears to have come into usage in 1848. At this stage the ‘cemetery’ was in fact the graveyard of the local ‘Anti-Burgher’ or ‘Seccession’ Presbyterian church, a small simple gabled building which stood on the eastern side of the present plot, built in 1773 and noted in the OS Memoirs of c.1834 as of ‘insignificant appearance measuring 50 feet by 27 feet and only capable of accommodating about 100’. The congregration was united with that of Millisle in 1906. Nothing remains of the church.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st Edition 1833/4.
2 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB1991), p. 50.
3 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps 1st Revision 1858-60.
4 PRONI MIC IP/382 Records of Ballycopeland Presbyterian Church, 1903-1941.

Secondary sources
1 Rev. T. Kilpatrick 'Millisle and Ballycopeland Presbyterian Chuch- a short history' (Newtownards, 1934), pp.111-160.
2 R.S.J. Clarke (compiler) 'Gravestone Inscriptions Vol.16 County Down, Barony of Ards' (U.H.F. Belfast 1975) pp.1-7
3 Grace Seymour 'Echoes of Millisle and district' (Rathfriland ?c.1983).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Small and unremarkable cemetery (once the graveyard of a now gone small Presbyterian church), just north of the village of Millisle with headstones dating back to 1848.