LYNN MEMORIAL

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Stone memorial dating from 1877 by architect William Henry Lynn commemorating members of the Lynn family and located to the central part of the Belfast City cemetery.

Horizontally laid granite stone on a shallow granite plinth set on an east-west axis incorporating three engraved bronze memorial plaques and a bronze maltese cross below.

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 ledger that was placed in memory of members of the Lynn family and designed by William Henry Lynn, one of the greatest of Irish architects. The Cemetery Committee minutes of 1877 reveal that there was an exchange of several letters with W. H. Lynn over the memorial he wished to have erected. This concerned the Committee’s insistence that the memorial should be on a brick foundation in order to ensure that immediately adjoining graves could be opened safely.

The first name on the gravestone is that of Samuel Ferres Lynn, described memorial as a ‘sculptor’, who died on 5 April 1876. The son of Lt Henry Lynn of the Irish Coast Guard Service and Margaretta Ferres, Lynn worked at the architectural office of his brother, William Henry Lynn, and Charles Lanyon in the early 1850s where he developed his interest in sculpture. He studied at the Belfast School of Art before going on to the Royal Academy in London where he won a number of medals and had some of his work exhibited. He established a practice in London, preparing sculptures for clients in both Britain and Ireland, and in 1861 he was elected to the Institute of Sculptors. One of his most famous sculptures is the statue of Rev. Henry Cooke, popularly, though incorrectly, known as ‘The Black Man’ outside RBAI. Samuel Ferres Lynn died at the home of his brother, W. H. Lynn, 3 Crumlin Terrace, Crumlin Road. He was unmarried.

The same memorial also commemorates William Henry Lynn who was born at St John’s Point, County Down, in 1829. In 1846, he was apprenticed to the famous architect Charles Lanyon. Lynn was clerk of works for a number of Lanyon projects, including Queen’s College, Belfast, and the courthouse on the Crumlin Road. He was made a junior partner in 1854, thus creating the firm Lanyon & Lynn (which became Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon in 1860 when Charles’s son John became a partner. After the partnership with the Lanyons was dissolved, Lynn worked independently from 1872.

Lynn has been described as ‘One of the greatest Irish architects of his century, a master of the large and intricate plan’ (Dictionary of Irish Biography). He was responsible for numerous public and private buildings and his church designs, many of them in the English Gothic style, have come in for particular praise. He employed Scottish Baronial architecture on a number of mansions, such as Belfast Castle. In addition to his skills as an architect, he was also landscape water-colourist of some distinction. He remained a modest and unassuming man and died unmarried at his home, Ardavon, on the Antrim Road, in Belfast. During his career he had amassed a fortune, leaving an estate valued at over £68,000. His bequests included £5,000 for St Anne’s Cathedral.

References:

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

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

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)
Dictionary of Irish Biography, 9 vols (Cambridge, 2009)

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
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
R. Age
S. Authenticity
U. Historic Associations

Evaluation

Horizontally laid granite stone memorial dating from 1877 by architect William Henry Lynn, one of Ireland's most renowned architects, commemorating the Lynn Family. Located to the central part of the Belfast City Cemetery. As a fine and unusual memorial, with three engraved bronze memorial plaques and a bronze maltese cross below, it has architectural and historical interest in its own right but also group value with the other listed memorials in the cemetery.

General comments

Architect's site visit confirmed that memorial is intact.