Belfast’s Forgotten Graveyard
When the Belfast workhouse opened in 1841, paupers who died were sent for burial in the existing cemeteries of the town, the closest being Friar’s Bush. In 1846, the workhouse had reached capacity. The Master had designated a space on workhouse grounds for burial. However, by March 1847 this space was overcrowded, leading the Guardians of the workhouse to describe it as “an objectionable sight”.
The poor ground in Friar’s Bush cemetery, known as “Plaguey Hill”
A circular from the central Poor Law Commissioners, overseers of the workhouse system, shows that Belfast was not the only workhouse to be carrying out this practice.
The Master, William Tidd, was not only burying those who died in the workhouse but also the bodies of unclaimed paupers who died in the town. He maintained that the graves were no less than 8 feet deep (to accommodate 4 or 5 stacked coffins) with 2 feet of earth placed over the uppermost coffin. As famine fever raged throughout the town, mortality rates rose and the whole town was concerned as to what to do with the bodies of the poor.
Belfast Union Workhouse
Bringing Up The Bodies
At a town meeting held in July 1847 at the peak of the typhus outbreak in the town, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Belfast, Dr. Cornelius Denvir reported on the state of the three burial grounds.
“With regard to the first [Shankill] he could state on the authority of Mr Walker […] that every spot available in that grave-yard was occupied; with regard to Friar’s Bush, he could, upon his own authority, state, that if the deaths continued in the same ratio as they had done for some time past, in ten days there would not be room found in that burying-place for the body of another individual; and as one of the Governors of the Charitable Society, he could also state that the grave-yard belonging to that society was quite full.” - Belfast Protestant Journal, 17 July 1847
The workhouse medical attendant noted that fever had already killed 1,758 between January and July in the Union Hospital alone.
By 1848, there was still no solution on how to address this problem. The middle classes pushed for a civic burial ground which did not materialise until Belfast Corporation opened the Belfast City Cemetery in 1869. The wealthy could still buy plots or be buried in family lots in the existing cemeteries. Where would the pauper dead be buried?
Under the Poor Law Extension Act of 1847 Guardians were empowered to acquire land adjacent to the workhouse for use as a burial ground. The Assistant Commissioner recommended setting up a site as far as possible from the main building, out of sight of the paupers, avoiding water sources and sewers. The Guardians further considered that the site should be close enough so that a handcart could be used to transport bodies at a lower expense than a horse-drawn cart.
In July of 1847 typhus was at its peak. The Guardians found a 3-acre site for sale “on the new road beyond the workhouse” meaning the Blackstaff Road. All that was needed to begin using this land was the rubber stamp of approval from the Commissioners in Dublin. The Commissioners hesitated; they wanted proof of the title of the land, they wanted legal advice and they were concerned that the Guardians might bury non-workhouse residents in this ground.
The Guardians, understandably exasperated at the delay, noted:
“[…]the Guardians deem it useless to take further steps on the matter, and if the Commissioners persevere in their objections the consequences of not having a place wherein to inter the dead are too serious for this Board to contemplate without alarm. The Board requests the Commissioners to take measures for avoiding this calamity.” - Belfast Board of Guardians rough minute book February 1847 – January 1848, entry for 15 September 1847
After multiple town meetings Belfast still desperately needed a burial ground for the poor in 1848 and this 3-acre site was being withheld by Commissioners sitting in Dublin. The Guardians took matters into their own hands.
The issue of lack of suitable burying grounds for pauper burials disappears from the town’s newspapers and public meeting minutes from late summer of 1848.
However the Commissioners didn’t give their assent for burials to begin until January of 1849. There are no officially recorded burials before the workhouse Guardians had Dublin’s consent to begin burials. The disappearance of the issue from the public record several months before this suggests that clandestine burials had begun, but they weren’t being recorded so as to keep the Commission in Dublin from finding out that the Belfast workhouse was no longer waiting for their approval.
The workhouse records reveal that a workhouse burial ground in Belfast was in use by January 1849 and that its use as a burial ground for the workhouse and Union Hospital continued throughout the rest of the century.
Ordinance Survey Map 1846 showing the Workhouse, Fever Hospital and the parcel of land that would become the burial ground.
In 1901 it was noted in the House of Commons that 10,000 burials had taken place in the workhouse burial ground. However the source of that figure also claimed it had been in operation for “over 30 years” (Northern Whig, 26 June 1902). By 1901 the workhouse burial ground had actually been in operation for over 50 years.
As yet it remains uncertain when exactly the last burials took place in this burial ground. Tom Hartley puts the date in the 1920s and we know that the workhouse was also burying inmates in the Dundonald and City cemeteries in the 1900s and 1910s.
The Bodies In The Playground
In the summer of 1986 the remains of 18 individuals were discovered during the construction of a children’s playground in Abingdon Street, just off the Donegall Road. It was ascertained that this construction disturbed part of the workhouse cemetery. Elderly residents of the area remembered the workhouse, or had known someone who did.
The location of the playground is entirely within the boundary of the workhouse burial ground - this can be proven with reference to the 1957 Ordnance Survey map reproduced below upon which the site purchased by the Guardians is marked with a red outline.
The railway line was built through the workhouse burial ground shortly after the site was acquired by the Guardians.
In 1928 Arellian nursery school opened on the northern section of the burial ground - this can also be used to date that the Guardians had stopped using the ground by the 1920s.
On the southern section of the ground, south of the railway line, houses have now been built.
Ordinance Survey map, 1957
Workhouse boundaries in yellow, burial ground in red North to top.
Take note of the small arrow below the bottom left corner of the workhouse burial ground, this marks the entrance to the burial ground.
There is nothing to mark the fact that this is the site where tens of thousands of people were buried in a period of approximately 80 years. My research is ongoing to calculate how many burials could be in this site but it may be as many as 50,000 or 60,000.
The Wall And Suzie The Cat
Part of the original perimeter wall of the burial ground has survived. The main route from the workhouse to the burial ground was the “new road” or Blackstaff Road as it was in the 1840s, called the Donegall Road today. A small section of the wall remains, the coursed basalt masonry matching that of remaining walls in the grounds of the workhouse (now the site of Belfast City Hospital). Residents remember it once having part of a gate attached, the fixings of which can still be seen. This section of wall is exactly where the arrow on the OS map indicates the entrance to the workhouse burial ground.
So Why Has This Wall Survived?
In 2004 a group including local organisations, environmental groups and Belfast City Council joined together to erect a small sculpture on the Donegall Road. This sculpture, “Suzie the City Cat”, was set atop the surviving wall, presumably just because the wall was there. It appears on no tours (yet), no lists of public art and most Belfast residents have no idea that it is there. The sculptor was Deborah Brown, who modelled the cat after a friend’s pet. The only reference to it is in a guide to her work:
A commission was for a fine cat which is to sit in the Donegall Road in Belfast atop a gatepost, seven feet high. It should indeed be appreciated by the local children who have named it Suzie. - Hilary Pyle, Deborah Brown: from painting to sculpture (Dublin 2001), p. 73
This small sculpture of a cat is essentially the reason that this part of the burial ground gate and wall remain.
There is nothing at the site to mark the fact that tens of thousands of people are buried there, and the reason for that, frankly, is because the people buried there were working-class people who fell on hard times, never managed to get back on their feet, died in the workhouse and had paupers’ burials in unmarked graves. I have been campaigning to raise awareness and get this site marked for the last 3 and a half years.
If you too would like to see this almost forgotten piece of local working-class history marked please write to your councillor and tell them.
Sources in addition to those quoted:
Belfast Board of Guardians minute books 1846 - 1849, PRONI (BG7/A)
H. G. Caldwell, Andrew Malcolm of Belfast 1818 - 1856 physician and historian (Belfast, 1977)
Tom Hartley, Belfast City Cemetery: The history of Belfast, written in stone (Belfast, 2014)
