Burial Ground, Antrim Castle Gardens, Randalstown Road, Antrim, Co Antrim

Burial Ground at Antrim Castle Gardens

This is a burial ground of 20th century date, laid out as a memorial ground reputedly in 1919, situated within the formal gardens of Antrim Castle demesne. It is a rectangular plot of ground, grassed over and bounded by tall hedges.

The ground contains a number of memorials of local historical interest. At the southern end stands a small yew tree in the centre of a circular mound, alongside a 19th century marble urn on a pedestal. At the northern end are two 20th century Celtic Revivalist crosses of carved granite, each bearing Celtic interlaced ornamentation and standing in its own rectangular plot marked by low stone plinth walls containing gravel. These are inscribed to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Algernon William John Clotworthy Skeffington, 12th Viscount of Massereene and Ferrard, who died in 1936, and his daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1930. Also at the northern end is a 20th century flat slab. The urn is dedicated to Margaretta, wife of Lord Ferrard who died in 1824, and its base bears various inscriptions referring to "this blessed retreat" chosen and formed by her taste. The urn was brought here from Oriel Temple in County Louth. A number of short flights of stone steps are arranged on various axes around the perimeter and in the centre of the ground.

The site has a long garden history predating its function as a burial ground. The area appears likely to have been covered with a formally laid out parterre or knot garden in the early 19th century. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s describe "a curious little parterre 27 yards square, surrounded by a beautiful lime hedge 20 feet high and laid out in the most fantastic manner", with beds containing flowers and numerous small beds of varying shapes enclosed by boxwood edging and containing gravel of different colours. At the centre stood a yew tree 14 feet high in the form of an obelisk. An illustration of around 1820 shows the yew obelisk in the foreground, a semi-circular recess in the lime hedge with three arches cut through it in the middle distance, and woodland beyond. The Ordnance Survey map of 1832 depicts a rectangular clearing in the gardens, while the 1857 map shows the rectangular plot formally laid out, extended further to the south than its present limits. Archaeological excavation in 1991 appeared to confirm the existence of the parterre as described in the historical sources. Until recently, two stone pineapples marked the entrance to the burial ground, and at one time these supported a whale-bone arch.