Carson Memorial

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Art Nouveau style stone memorial dating from c.1905 commemorating Alan Campbell Carson and located in the Belfast City cemetery.

Carved memorial limestone plaque facing west set within an elaborately carved surround with foliage, roots and stems; a cartouche on top flanked by square plan pilasters with foliage. Rectangular plan base with carved inscription.

The plot is surrounded by square section coping stones and two square plan pilasters with curved coping stones.

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.

Among the monuments in Belfast City Cemetery that have been selected for listing is the Carson memorial in the Art Nouveau style. Referring to Edwardian architecture, Hugh Dixon (p. 178) has commented: ‘Many new influences began to emerge and of these the most immediate and the most distinctive was the tide of Art Nouveau which had begun as a wayward decorative manner of great originality in Belgium’. Examples include the former Crymble’s music shop in Wellington Place, Belfast, by W. J. W. Roome, of 1903 and the contemporary Castle Buildings in Castle Place by Blackwood and Jury. Funerary monuments in this style are exceptionally rare.

The monument commemorates Alan Campbell Carson who died in 1905 aged 11 and his parents – James Campbell Carson who died in 1929 aged 57 and Annie Carson who died in 1973 aged 103. Alan Campbell Carson was born on 14 March 1894 at 17 Myrtlegrove Terrace, Cliftonville, Belfast. His parents were James Campbell Carson, an optician, and Annie (nee Goode). The 1901 census shows the family resident in Myrtlefield Park. It reveals that James Campbell Carson had been born in Lanark in Scotland, while his wife Annie was a native of Sale in England. The family belonged to the Church of Ireland. The Carsons later moved to the Malone Road. James Campbell died on 13 May 1929 leaving an estate valued at £10,842.

References

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Belfast Corporation records: Minute Books of the [City] Cemetery Committee, 1867-87 – LA/7/11/AB/2
Street directories

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

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

Published sources
Paul Larmour, Belfast: an illustrated architectural guide (Belfast, 1987)
Tom Hartley, Written in Stone: The History of Belfast City Cemetery (Belfast, 2006)
Hugh Dixon, Introduction to Ulster Architecture (Belfast, 2008 edition)

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

X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

Art Nouveau style stone memorial dating from c.1905 commemorating Alan Campbell Carson and located in the central part of Belfast City cemetery. It has group value with the other listed structures in this cemetery: the entrance gates (HB26.25.001A); the gate lodge (HB26.25.001B) the fountains (HB26.25.001C), the Vaults (HB.25.26.001D) and other listed memorials (HB.25.26.001 E, F, I, J & K). One of very few memorials of this style which makes it is exceptionally rare in Northern Ireland.