A Visitors Guide to Derry City Cemetery Introduction History

A Visitors Guide to Derry City Cemetery Introduction History A visitor to Derry City Cemetery By the middle years of the 19th will find the history of century it was clear that the city’s Derry~Londonderry all around graveyards, attached to churches, them – literally written in stone. were becoming overcrowded. This guide provides a brief history of the From 1 January Joseph Bigger, died cemetery and information on some of its 1867 the graveyards 12 January 1854, was more interesting features and on some of attached to St. the first adult buried those who rest here. For further information Columb’s Cathedral, St. in the Cemetery (His visitors can contact the staff of the cemetery Augustine’s Church grandson, David, was or read ‘Derry City Cemetery 1853-2003 and Long Tower Chapel Superintendant of the – 150 Years’ by Rev. Bernard J Canning. were closed to new City Cemetery and burials, with ‘access’ actually lived in the restricted to those Gatelodge). Today families with rights there are over 74,594 to graves. burials – an average of The City Cemetery was 400 per year. opened in 1853. It is The City Cemetery the property of Derry became the main City Council. People burial place for both buying a grave do not Protestants and own the grave but Catholics in the city. simply have the right However, from the to burial in it. 1970s and the onset of ‘the troubles’, The first reported Protestant families burial here is that of increasingly buried their Robert McClelland, dead in the Waterside, a 10-month-old at the Altnagelvin child of Orchard (opened in 1963) and Street, who died Ballyoan (opened in 10 December 1853. 1991) cemeteries. 2 3 Memorial Stones Victorian Victorian funerary architecture often reflected an individual’s status in society, and sometimes and Funerary ornate and lavish monuments were erected. architecture This style frequently includes urns, obelisks, broken columns and angels. This type of imagery, referred to as neo-classical, was popular up to the end of 19th century. Influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art it is proportioned and symmetrical. Three historical periods are reflected in the Cemetery’s headstones and monuments – Victorian, Edwardian Many of the smaller headstones and later twentieth include motifs which carry century. symbolic reference: wreaths (eternal life), grieving women, clasped hands (a farewell or last good-bye), and IHS (Latin form of first three letters derived from Greek spelling of Jesus). 4 5 Other features include: Edwardian The covered vase and early 20th Century The obelisk in many ancient civilisations After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, a new public attitude surfaced funerary urns were used for storing an Egyptian which seemed to resent the large ashes from cremation. In ancient symbol of amounts of money required for Greece, vases were used as grave eternal life, lavish headstones and monuments. markers. resurrection and This was accentuated by the mass The anchor regeneration. slaughter of the First World War. Many obelisks symbolising hope, confidence and carry incised safety, is quite common in the hieroglyphics. Protestant section. The anchor as a symbol dates back to the early Christian period when it was used as a disguised cross and as a marker to guide the way to secret meeting places. An anchor entangled in a Victorian funerary architecture rope symbolises death. gave way to the smaller, less lavish memorials and lasted until the The Celtic Cross 1950s. These stone crosses date from the Later 20th Century Celtic Revival at the end of 19th century and refer to the crosses By now headstones were of Irish monasteries of the 8th and increasingly regulated to specific 9th centuries. According to Tom dimensions and stone surrounds Hartley, the historian of Belfast disappeared to facilitate City Cemetery, three types of development and maintenance Celtic Cross can be found: Plain, of new lawn sections. A modern The Celtic Cross with little or no decoration; A broken column memorial is the open Bible with a Ornamental with a surface covered although also found in symbolises a young suitable inscription. Angels have by interlace and geometric spirals; Protestant cemeteries, life cut short, and can always been popular implying the and Scriptural, where panels carry in the City Cemetery represent the loss of Resurrection of Christ at Easter multiple figures reflecting symbolic it is more common in the family head or the and implying hope. Other popular elements of the old and new Catholic sections. end of a family line. imagery includes the Dove of Peace testaments. and the Rose as a sign of love. 6 7 There are a number of historical themes and periods which are Features & themes reflected in the cemetery. of the Cemetery Victorian Industry and Commerce The city which the visitor sees today is very much the creation of the growth of Derry in the Victorian era. Distilling, textiles and agricultural produce were all important, but it was Derry’s port which made the city the natural hub for commerce and trade in the North West. In 1851 William Tillie and his partner John Henderson established the first shirt factory in Derry. By 1890 Tillie & Henderson employed 1,500 people. The names Cooke, McCorkell and Mitchell are synonomous with Derry’s port, and all are to be Many cemeteries will share a range found in the Cemetery. of features and themes which the visitor The rise of shipbuilding and emigration was will see here in Derry City Cemetery. closely related to the development of the However, it is the sheer diversity of region’s railway system. A visitor to the City those that are buried here, that make Cemetery will find many references to this era this Cemetery such a unique record of in the older sections of the Cemetery. the history of the city and region. 8 9 Arts and Culture Derry will be the first UK City of genres as diverse as architecture, Culture in 2013, but its tradition of hymn writing and visual arts. Often artistic creation is long established. their achievements are less noted The City Cemetery references here in their home city, than they are people who have left their mark in in other places around the world! Within the cemetery visitors will see the headstone of Cecil Frances Alexander, who International Conflict wrote hymns including ‘There is a green hill far away’, and also the family plot of the Fosters The city and its citizens have often had a of Ballinacross who, by tradition, are related prominent role in international conflict. to Stephen Collins Foster, who became one of As the British Empire lengthened its the leading figures of American music through reach, so men from Derry and the North songs such as ‘Camptown Races’. West would serve in campaigns around the globe. Since World War One the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Unmarked Graves (CWGC) has been responsible for As with all large, urban cemeteries, are buried – 3 for Catholics and 2 Britain’s war dead. there are a number of unmarked for Protestants. An estimated 7,500 According to the CWGC the Cemetery graves and plots. ‘The poor of adults are buried in those plots plus includes 200 such burials, 95 from Derry’ are remembered by the many stillborn infants. World War One and 99 from World War ‘Celtic Cross of St Columba to the The Poor Sisters of Nazareth came Two. The ‘Cross of Sacrifice’ is located Forgotten Dead of Derry’ (erected to the city in 1892 and still care for near to the entrance to the cemetery. 1993). On 20 February 2011, a those in need today. In their plot in Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield the monument in memory of all the the City Cemetery 1,062 residents cross is located in every cemetery with a stillborn babies buried in unmarked of Nazareth House were buried significant number of CWGC burials. graves was also unveiled. between 1897 and 1991. This cemetery of course also includes There are 5 unmarked sections in other people who died as a result of which the poor of Derry international conflict, but on the home front. On Easter Tuesday 1941 a lone German bomber attacked the city, and killed 13 people in Messines Park. 10 11 Politics and Troubles One of the most tragic days Northern Ireland is commonly of the Troubles was the seen as a politically divided place. 30th January 1972 – Bloody It is often commented that ‘the Sunday. A few days later on Troubles’ began in Derry in 1968, 2nd February an estimated but this was only the most recent 30,000 people paid their instalment of a conflict that began respects at the largest 400 years ago. Over the years this Another era of heightened tensions funeral the City Cemetery th conflict has waxed and waned, but ran from the late 19 Century has ever witnessed. many of the significant events have (the Home Rule Crisis) through become part of the city and its to the partition of Ireland in 1921. As tensions rose and violence peoples’ identity. It is often said that this was the escalated, many Protestants living period when modern Ireland was The City Cemetery bears witness on the Cityside crossed the river created, and the Cemetery includes to the cost of this conflict. to the Waterside, and fewer a number of political activists from For example, even though the chose to be buried here in the that era. cemetery was only founded in the City Cemetery. The visitor will mid-19th Century, it contains human The early 20s saw an eruption of therefore gain a stronger sense remains from the 17th Century violence in the city, and this was of the Nationalist experience of Siege of the city.

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