10 things you (maybe) didn't know about the Shankill Graveyard

# 1

Shankill Graveyard is the oldest surviving part of the Shankill.  Dating from the 5th century it is 1600 years old – that's 1,000 years before the U.S.A. was established!  (Wow)

# 2

The River Farset runs alongside the Graveyard (on the Glenwood School side) but old maps show that it ran through the original Graveyard which was not walled in as today.  Belfast ("Béal Feirste" in Gaelic) takes its name from the Farset.

# 3

Parts of a Bishop's crozier, dating from the 9th century, is in the National Museum in Dublin.  (Send it back!).

# 4

It is recorded that the Shankill Church paid taxes to Pope Nicholas at the end of the 13th century.  (So it was a Roman Catholic Church until the Reformation).

# 5

In 1855 the foundation stone of the original church was discovered when a grave was being dug - it was blasted with gun-powder. (From Ulster Journal of Archaeology).

# 6

The Graveyard contains the grave of Sgt. John Brown of the 17th Lancers, who was part of the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade".

# 7

There is a mass grave in the Graveyard (left-hand side) containing the bodies of men, women and children who died of a plague of consumption (T.B.) in the 1840's.  (Very sad).

# 8

Soldiers from King Billy's (William III) army who died on their way through Belfast to the Boyne are buried in the Graveyard.  (There's a headstone to prove it).

# 9

A headstone with the skull and crossbones marks the grave of a victim of one of Belfast's first riots.  It reads "James Murdock, aged 17 years, who died 23rd August 1864 from the effect of a gun-shot wound received while in the act of rescuing a fellow creature from the same fate".

# 10

The statue of Queen Victoria was rescued from a Belfast City Council cleansing depot and erected in the Graveyard in 2005.  It was originally on a plinth on Durham Street Primary School.

Shankill Graveyard – well worth a visit!!

(Have a look at 10 more things you (maybe) didn't know about Shankill Graveyard).