Inglis Memorial

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Portland limestone memorial dating commemorating the from c.1911 by sculptress Rosamond Praeger of Hollywood and located in the Belfast City cemetery.

Two elaborately sculpted plaques to east elevation depicting a man sowing and a woman reaping set within square-headed arches. Plain ashlar Portland limestone surround with carved inscription from the Galatians 6:9: ‘In due season ye shall rear if ye faint not’ and the name ‘Inglis’ below in raised lettering. Elaborately carved vines and leaves to corners supporting a projecting coping stone. Three recessed memorial plaques to west with engraved names.

The plot is enclose by low square limestone walling.

Historical information

In the course of the nineteenth century Belfast expanded at a phenomenal rate. 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. 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.

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. 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.

The Inglis memorial in Belfast City Cemetery is one of the most distinguished monuments in this burial ground. Of Portland limestone, the memorial features, on its east side, relief carvings of a man sowing seed and women reaping. Larmour (p. 40) is firmly of the opinion that it is ‘undoubtedly by the sculptress Rosamond Praeger of Holywood’. The scenes depicted on this memorial are entirely appropriate for the burial marker of a family that had made its mark in Belfast as bakers and flour merchants.

James Inglis moved to Belfast from Scotland began the business in 1871 as James Inglis & Co. The firm had retail premises at Castle Street and a factory in Eliza Street. In 1877 Inglis lived in Alma Cottage, Rugby Road, Belfast. The firm expanded considerably and successfully introduced some of the most advanced manufacturing techniques to its operations. In the publication Industries of Ireland (1891) the business was described as follows:

There is no manufacture that we know of in the city that has shown such extraordinary advancement during recent times … It has, by the introduction of improved ferments and of ingenious machinery, been raised to a position of scientific perfection which amounts to a complete revolution.

By this time Inglis had been joined in the business by his brother George. At some point in the 1890s James Inglis moved to Dublin, residing at 64 Upper Leeson Street. His wife Fanny died in June 1910 and was buried in Belfast City Cemetery. Their eldest son William Malcolm Inglis had already been interred there following his death in 1905.

In the 1911 census James Inglis is shown at his Upper Leeson Street residence. By this time he was aged 74. His place of birth was given as Dunfermline. He was still active in the family firm for the census states that he was Director of Inglis Ltd, Bakers and Flour Merchants. He belonged to the Church of Ireland. The census shows that he had fathered seven children, six of whom were still alive. Living with him were his daughters, Myra Brown Inglis (aged 33) and Caroline Todd Mulliner (aged 36), both of whom had been born in Belfast. Caroline may have been visiting her father and sister for though she was married with two children, none of them were present in the household on the night of the census.

James Inglis died at the age of 88 at his home in Upper Leeson Street on 28 August 1925, leaving an estate valued at £28,134. He too was brought north for burial in Belfast City Cemetery. Among his various beguests was the gift of £300 to the Royal Victoria Hospital for maintaining a bed to be known as ‘The James and Fanny Inglis Bed’. The business continued for another half century, but finally closed in 1977.

Rosamond Praeger (1867–1954), the daughter of a Dutch linen merchant who had emigrated to Belfast, was one of the leading sculptors working in Ireland in the early twentieth century. Her work can be seen as architectural decoration on churches (such as the carvings of children’s heads in the baptistery of St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast) and other public buildings, as well as private houses. She also worked on a number of memorials, such as those to Thomas Andrews and Sir Edward Carson and several First World War memorials. Her biographer in the Dictionary of Irish Biography includes Inglis memorial among ‘her undisputed masterpieces’, and dates it to 1905.

References

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Records of Inglis & Co., Ltd, Bakers & Flour Millers, Belfast – D2774

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

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

Published sources
The Belfast Gazette, vol. 6 (1926)
Paul Larmour, Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide (Belfast, 1987)
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
1901 and 1911 census returns: www.census.nationalarchives.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
U. Historic Associations
X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
Z. Rarity
V. Authorship

Evaluation

Unusual and well executed Portland limestone memorial dating from c.1911 commemorating the Inglis family. It has two high quality sculpted plaques by the renowned sculptor Rosamond Praeger and is located at a prime location in the Belfast City Cemetery. It has group vaue with the other listed structures in this cemetery.