Belfast City Cemetery

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A High Victorian Gothic-revival style gateway dating from 1868 to designs by English landscape designer William Gay of Bradford and constructed by local firm Monk &Co, forms the principal entrance to Belfast City cemetery fronting onto the west side of Falls Road. The site is enclosed by stone walling with railings to east with a gateway to northeast (principal entrance) and a smaller gateway to southeast, stone walling to north, south and west. To the north of the principal gateway is the Superintendent’s house (listed under HB26.25.001 B).

Walling to gateway laid to un-coursed, rock-faced basalt with cut-stone coping and cast-iron railings. Gate piers (four to principal entrance and two to southeast entrance) built of rock-faced basalt with sandstone dressings supporting painted cast-iron gates.

The principal entrance has two three-stage gate piers to centre. Rectangular plan form with projecting plinth to first stage with single stage pedimented buttress to east and west face. Hexagonal plan to second stage and pinnacle to third having carved stone gablets and bosses. Smaller gate piers to sides have rectangular form plan with projecting plinth. Pier cap consist of square plan obelisk with carved stone gablets to each face with carved trefoil and bosses. OS benchmark carved to base of side pier to south.

Gate piers to southeast entrance are also rectangular form plan with projecting plinth and pier cap consisting of square plan obelisk with carved stone gablets to each face with carved trefoil and bosses.

The plots are covered with grass and separated by concrete paved pathways.

The graveyard is enclosed by the gateway to east, un-coursed rock-faced basalt walling with cut stone sandstone coping and topped by cast iron railings.

Historical information

In the course of the nineteenth century Belfast expanded at a phenomenal rate. In 1800 its population stood at around 20,000. By 1841 it had reached 70,000 and in 1871 it had topped 120,000, while in 1911 it was 385,000, by some way the largest urban population in Ireland. The reason for its growth was due to industrial expansion, and in particular the application of mechanisation to what had hitherto been largely cottage industries. As Belfast’s population rose, there was increasing pressure on its existing burial grounds, exacerbated by outbreaks of cholera and the Great Famine. Both Shankill graveyard and Friar’s Bush graveyard were becoming overcrowded, the while the New Burying Ground, Clifton Street, was also filling up. The opening of a new Presbyterian cemetery at Balmoral only partly alleviated the situation.

Responding to this situation, in the autumn of 1865 Belfast Corporation decided to accept Thomas Sinclair’s offer of 101 acres on the Falls Road for municipal purposes. At that time the property included the Falls Bleach Works. Matters were formalised under The Belfast Burial Ground Act of June 1866. The purchase of the site was completed in December of that year for £12,000 with an annual ground rent of £73 5s. 4d. Of this site, 45 acres would be used as a cemetery, with most of the remainder being given over to what would become Falls Park.

On 25 January 1867 the Cemetery Committee of Belfast Corporation awarded the contract to design the new cemetery to William Gay of Bradford. By this time Gay was an experienced surveyor and landscape designer who had worked on the layouts of numerous cemeteries in England, including burial grounds in Leicester, Bradford, Wigan and Lancaster.

The cemetery would contain two different types of grave. Public graves remained the property of the Corporation and were for the city’s poor. On the other hand, proprietary graves could be purchased either by individuals or by institutions. These were arranged into different classes and priced accordingly. Whereas the public graves were to be out of sight on the fringes of the graveyard, the proprietary graves were to be positioned in the most sought after portion of the cemetery where suitable monuments could be erected to commemorate those interred.

The contract to carry out the construction of the boundary walls and laying out of the paths and roadways in the cemetery, as well as the drainage, was awarded to Monk & Co. on 1 August 1867. The value of their tender was £8,700. A difficulty arose when it was realised that this did not include the entrances which were part of another tender for iron work. It was agreed to give Monk & Co. another £200 to cover the cost of the entrances. Even with this additional fee, the tender from this firm was still the lowest. The wrought iron gates were supplied by the firm Cliff & Co. of Bradford.

On 15 May 1868 Gay reported to the Committee that the section of the front boundary wall that he had inspected was superior in quality to what the contractors were required to build. He recommended that the contractors be allowed another £100 which would ensure that the rest of the front wall would be built to this standard ‘and agreeable to the specimen already completed at both entrances.’

At an advanced stage in the laying out of the cemetery there arose a dispute between Dr Patrick Dorrian, Catholic bishop of Down and Connor, over the ground reserved for the burial of Catholics. Under the plans then being implemented 15 acres would be set aside for Catholic burials – 10 acres for public graves, and 5 acres for proprietary graves and a mortuary chapel. The bishop wished to have exclusive control over the Catholic section so that he could consecrate it according to the rites of his Church. He also felt that the Catholic section was not sufficiently large for the city’s Catholic population. No satisfactory settlement could be reached with regard to the Catholic portion of the Corporation’s new cemetery and as a result a new Catholic cemetery – Milltown – was opened a short distance away on the opposite side of the Falls Road in November 1869.

‘The Belfast Cemetery’, as the name had been agreed on 29 September 1868, opened on 1 August 1869, with the first burials taking place there three days later. In 1871 a Jewish section was opened. The superintendent’s house was completed in 1873 to designs by John Lanyon. In 1874 the mortuary chapel was built by Samuel Carson; this was demolished in 1985. The 1912 the Glenalina extension was acquired, increasing the size of the cemetery to 109 acres; the first burial in it took place in November 1915. On 28 May 1913 it was agreed that the cemetery would henceforth be known as ‘Belfast City Cemetery’.

The HB file refers to the vandalism of the entrance gates in 1994, requiring repair to both of them.

References

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1901 – OS/6/1/60/3
Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 1920-39 – OS/6/1/60/4
Belfast Corporation records: Minute Book of the [City] Cemetery Committee, 1867-19XX – LA/7/11/AB/2-7
Valuation Revision Books - VAL/12/B/4/5B (1865-79)

Northern Ireland Environment Agency
First Survey Record – HB/26/25/001
HB Records – HB/26/25/001A

Ulster Historical Foundation
Card index of gravestone inscriptions in Belfast City Cemetery
Birth, marriage and death databases

Published sources
Belfast Newsletter, 7 October 1867
Paul Larmour, Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide (Belfast, 1987)
Robert Scott, A Breath of Fresh Air: The Story of Belfast’s Parks (Belfast, 2000)
Tom Hartley, Written in Stone: The History of Belfast City Cemetery (Belfast, 2006)

Online sources
Natural Stone Database: www.stonedatabase.com
Dictionary of Irish Architects: www.dia.ie

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

An interesting example of a High Victorian Gothic-revival style gateway dating from 1868 to designs by English landscape designer William Gay of Bradford and constructed by local firm Monk &Co. The elaborately detailed gate piers forms the principal entrance to Belfast City cemetery. The entranceway has group value with the other listed structures within the cemetery; the gate lodge HB26.25.001B; the fountains HB26.25.001C and the listed vaults and memorials, HB26.25.001D-K.