Though you may have wondered what lies behind the black iron gates to the gatehouse that juts out on Stranmillis Road in south Belfast, chances are you probably don’t know too much about the cemetery that lies within.
Located right next to the Ulster Museum, the Friar’s Bush plot is only two acres in size but the history buried underneath is (quite literally) immeasurable.
As you pass through the arched gothic gate lodge, built by the Marquess of Donegall in 1828, one of the first things you’ll notice is the raised ground, which historian and tour guide, Mark Doherty, describes as “the hill of bones”.
“This was a country burying ground which meant everyone was buried here - regardless of your particular band of Christianity,” he explains.
“There were no rules, so you’d turn up with a body, a coffin and a couple of spades and you got digging – if you came across bones and skulls, you moved them aside, you fired them back in and covered them over. This was the standard in Georgian times and earlier.
“This happened generation after generation and that’s why the ground is so humpy bumpy because of hundred and hundreds of years of people being buried randomly.”
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Amongst the uneven concrete headstones in the centre of the cemetery sits an old hawthorn bush which Mark says is responsible for giving the site its name.
“It’s an oral tradition that gave this place its name,” he says.
“In 1690 King William of Orange marched up the Malone Road with 20,000 men heading south to the Boyne and won the battle against his father-in-law King James II.
“So, the consequence of that was from 1691 onwards the penal laws were introduced and the laws got so severe that it became a capital offence to celebrate a Catholic Mass.
“And the story goes that a Friar was caught here celebrating secret Mass, and that he was shot and buried on the spot.
“So, the place which until then had been called Friar’s Town became Friar’s Bush because he was killed and buried under the Hawthorn bush.”
The cemetery is also the resting place of thousands of victims of hunger, typhus fever and cholera from epidemics of the early 19th century and the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s.
These people were buried in a mass grave dubbed the ‘Plaguey Pit’, which is located just inside the cemetery’s main gates with a dedicated memorial stone in place.
Mark tells a story from 1833 of a woman standing crying at the gates bending under a load. Under each arm she carried a coffin with her children inside. She was hurrying into the graveyard to have them deposited in the pits as she had no money to bury them.
He believes the cemetery is “one of the starkest images of poverty in Belfast” as there are also many ornate graves situated throughout the site.
Those interred in the cemetery include prominent newspapermen Kevin T Buggy of the nationalist Belfast Vindicator and Daniel Read of the Belfast Morning News [which merged with The Irish News in 1902] and local publicans like the Lavery family who established the famous Lavery’s Bar in Bradbury Place. Also Bernard Hughes, the rags-to-riches entrepreneur and inventor of the Belfast bap.
However, one of the most impressive monuments is the five-foot-tall marble memorial to Andrew Joseph McKenna, which is missing one important feature.
“Andrew Joseph McKenna was a very talented writer, he became the editor of Ulster Observer which was giving a voice to the growing Catholic and nationalist population in Belfast,” Mark recounts.
McKenna used his commanding presence, vigorous pen and effective public speaking manner to become a well-known figure in Belfast. However, his outlook was more liberal than that of the paper’s shareholders and within two years friction had developed between them. In the 1860s he quarrelled with Patrick Dorrian, Bishop of Down and Connor, and was removed from his post.
Less than a month later he had launched a new paper called the Northern Star. Bishop Dorrian did his best to crush it by spending thousands of pounds launching a rival paper called the Ulster Examiner. But he failed to put the Northern Star out of business and in 1869 had to pay McKenna £250 in libel damages.
However, in 1870 whilst working in Derry, McKenna fell victim to a sectarian attack which is believed to have contributed to his subsequent death 18 months later at the age of 38.
Thousands attended his funeral, including Bishop Dorrian who conducted the service. The large Gothic tribute, complete with a life-like bust, was erected by public subscription on his grave.
“We think the bust was decapitated by vandals in the in the 1960s or 70s,” says Mark, who along with the other tour guides, have dubbed McKenna’s plot the ‘Headless Patriot’s Grave’.
“It was briefly recovered in the 1980s but mysteriously disappeared again. It’s still out there somewhere and it’d be lovely to bring it back and restore the memorial.
“So, it’d be brilliant if someone could bring us the head of Andrew McKenna,” he laughs.
Mark and his seven-strong tour guide team having been conducting tours of the graveyard since September 2023.
“There’s Peter from east Belfast, Barry who lives in Lisburn, Ricky from west Belfast, Susan who lives locally, Judith who lives on Malone, Andrew who specialises in the macabre black Belfast tours and Steven who’s actually a professional actor because once a month we do a dramatic tour here,” he enthuses.
“They’re all brilliant and each bring something unique to the tours which I think is fitting because there’s so much history here – I always say the more you look, the more you find.
“An English professor called John Kitching wrote a poem called History and the last line of it really resonates with me: ‘History is the blended thread that binds the living to the dead’ – it just summarises what it’s all about.”
In the last year, almost 8,000 people have passed through the iconic gothic gates.
The memory of Éamon Phoenix, who had a long association with the Irish News and contributed the On This Day column, helps motivate the Friar’s Bush team. Dr Phoenix died in November 2022, aged 69.
“We do this to try and keep on the legacy of Éamon Phoenix, who for 40 years told the story and wrote the book on Friar’s Bush,” explains Mark.
“He did such amazing work, and we want to keep the story he was telling alive and ensure that other generations will see and know about Friar’s Bush.
“There’s a story in every inch of this cemetery and we’re just hoping to tell it.”
Friar’s Bush tours run every Friday at 11am and 2pm. More information at Friar’s Bush Graveyard Belfast.
