Mallusk Cemetery, Mallusk Road, Newtownabbey

Mallusk Cemetery is a mid-eighteenth century burial ground located north of Mallusk Road in Newtownabbey, accessed through a square plan gatescreen from Park Road to the east. The cemetery is interdenominational and laid out on a grid pattern with ground sloping downward from the elevated north-west corner.

The entrance features a gatescreen with square random rubble basalt pillars set diagonally against a random rubble wall, with strap pointing and square pointed caps. The central gates are a twentieth century replacement, flanked by original cast metal pedestrian gates on either side. The site is bounded by low dry stone walls and hedges on all sides, with roads to the south and east and houses to the west.

The cemetery contains a broad range of grave markers spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from stone and cast iron to more elaborate monuments. The southern section, still in active use, comprises gravel paths with twentieth century grave markers. The north-west corner preserves many of the oldest graves, with a variety of stone carving and cast iron railings set within grassed areas and yew trees. The earliest recorded grave markers are those of John Black, son of Joseph Black, who died 5 January 1766 aged 23 years, and Mary Templeton, who died 9 November 1776 aged 67 years. To the right on entry stands an iron lamp holder and a small single-storey store building.

The site occupies land formerly occupied by a 14th or 15th century church, now vanished without surviving foundations. The church site contained a bulluan and souterrain. Although the cemetery first appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833, the presence of grave stones dated 1766 confirms a mid-eighteenth century origin. The 1833 OS map records a small rectangular building on the south side. The Townland Valuation of 1836 records a graveyard valued at £0 6s 3d. Griffiths Valuation records a graveyard and watchman's house, valuing the graveyard at £0 10s 0d and the building at £2 10s 0d. According to OS memoir notes for SM7 files Ant 056:040, Boyle describes a two-storey house built by a committee of farmers around 1830. The lower storey housed a family of graveyard attendants, while the upper storey served as a watch room.

The watch building reflects concerns that arose before the Anatomy Act of 1832, when demand for illegally obtained corpses for medical research and the robbery of dead bodies created a need to safeguard the recently deceased. Reverend R. R. Cox of St. Bride's Church, Kilbride, recorded precautions taken at Mallusk: an iron lamp standard erected about the middle of the burial ground, standing approximately 7 feet high with a square openwork iron frame to hold a lantern. Cox noted there was apparently no shelter for the watchers, though he suggested the light was sufficiently intimidating. Gravestone inscriptions have been recorded in Rosemary Sibbett's Mallusk Memorials (1997).