Old Church Graveyard, Church Road, Ballynure, Co Antrim

Old Church Graveyard at Ballynure is an 18th-century cemetery located south of Church Road, opposite Christ Church. The graveyard contains the remains of an old parish church, gravestones dating from the early 18th century onwards, and various mausoleums and family plots.

The site is accessed from the north-west corner through rubble square pillars and original cast-iron gates. Immediately inside to the east stands a single-storey gatehouse, formerly a crypt house, with a pitched stone-tiled roof and walls of random rubble featuring narrow slit windows opening to gable-ends, and splayed piers flanking the entrance.

At the centre of the graveyard is a collection of tombs and remains. A plot with gable-ends connected by wall is surmounted by cast-iron railing, with memorial stones fixed in the west wall. To the west is rectangular walling gabled to the north with a grass roof, and the remains of a square tower in the west corner. To the south-west are the remains of a corner of the church, containing an arched opening to the south. To the east stands a mausoleum with pitched stone-tiled roof and granite quoins. The graveyard is bounded to the north by random rubble walling, supported to the road by modern brick walling.

The graveyard was built on the site of an ancient religious house. The earliest readable gravestone dates from 1717 according to Ordnance Survey memoirs of 1840, though a stone from 1765 has also been recorded. The church itself, now ruined, was described in the 1840 memoirs as a clumsy little structure, approximately 52 feet long and 30 feet wide with capacity for about 100 persons. It featured a low square tower and belfry at its western end, with the tower added in 1815 and bell in 1819. By the time of the Griffiths Valuation in 1859, the site was recorded as a graveyard.

The gatehouse at the entrance, originally known as the corpse house, was used to store bodies until decomposition made them unsuitable for body snatchers, who were active in the period. This practice was a specific concern in 18th and 19th-century graveyards.

The graveyard has historical connections to Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, who served as minister of Kilroot parish, which included Ballynure. The graveyard contains burials of notable local families including the Dodds and Ellis families. The site is a scheduled monument.