Milltown Cemetery, 546 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12 6EQ

Milltown Cemetery Gate Screen, Boundary Walls and Railings, Falls Road, Belfast

This is a High Victorian Romanesque arched gate screen in sandstone, dating from 1869, designed by the architect Timothy Hevey. It forms the principal entrance to Milltown Cemetery, facing onto the east side of Falls Road. The gate screen is of fine proportions and high standard of design, with a great deal of decorative detail. It has group value with two other listed structures also designed by Timothy Hevey and positioned nearby within the cemetery: the Clark Canavan Celtic cross and the Bowen vault.

The walling to the gateway is laid in unccoursed rock-faced Scrabo sandstone with cut-stone Giffnock sandstone coping. Decorative details are carried out in a combination of Dungannon, Giffnock, and Corsehill ashlar sandstone. Some Dungannon sandstone has been replaced in recent years using Peak Moor sandstone. The arched gate screen features side gablets, buttresses, and a cross finial to its apex. On the outer face of the arch, a carved inscription from the Nicene Creed reads: "et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen." The inner face of the arch has a rosette to the tympanum with unfinished carving. The gate piers have octagonal caps with carved finials and are joined to the main archway by a balustraded gate screen with painted metal inserts and Corsehill sandstone coping. The remainder of the walling to the west of the gate screen consists of a similarly detailed dwarf wall topped with painted metal railings.

A contemporary newspaper account from the Belfast Morning News of 19 September 1870 provides a detailed description of the entrance as it appeared at the time of opening. The entrance arch was eleven and a half feet wide and eighteen feet high to the soffit of the arch, enriched with deeply cut mouldings. The jambs were relieved with polished shafts of Tullamore limestone, and the imposts and capitals under the arch were carved by local craftsmen working under the architect's direction and from his own drawings. The tympanum above the main arch was left rough at the time, intended to receive a future carving of the Resurrection. The kneelers at the four angles under the coping were similarly left rough, intended to be carved with angels. The whole arch was surmounted by a cross at an elevation of thirty-five feet from the ground. Two curved wing walls receded from two large circular piers on the road side, approximately forty-five feet apart on either side of the main gate. These circular walls were each divided into six panels by red stone shafts with curved caps and bases, the intermediate spaces filled with appropriately designed metalwork. Hung to these circular piers were two wickets, which, together with the large gate, were framed in pitch pine with panelling of wrought ironwork. The entrance walling was constructed in Scrabo stone with dressings of Dungannon stone and red stone from Dumfries. The site is enclosed by stone walling and gateway to the west, a hedge to the north and east, and a wall to the south. To the south of the gateway stands the modern single-storey cemetery office building, of little architectural interest. The plots within the cemetery are covered with grass and separated by concrete paved paths.

The contractors for the original construction were J. & J. Guiler of College Street, Belfast, and the drainage of the cemetery was carried out by John Smyth, Civil Engineer.

Timothy Hevey, of Linenhall Street, Belfast, was only twenty-three years old when he designed this entrance, having relatively recently returned from Dublin to his native Belfast. He went on to become widely regarded as one of the leading Catholic architects in Ireland, designing a number of important Catholic churches including St Eunan's Cathedral in Letterkenny, County Donegal. He died in 1878 at the age of just thirty-two. Paul Larmour's guide to Belfast's architecture includes a perspective sketch by Hevey of the cemetery entrance showing a proposed mortuary chapel within the cemetery grounds that was never executed. Hevey is also credited with the cross to Reverends Clarke and Canavan also within Milltown Cemetery.

The cemetery was established following a dispute between the Catholic bishop Dr Dorrian and Belfast Corporation. In 1866, the Corporation had purchased a site on the Falls Road as a municipal cemetery, setting aside fifteen acres for Catholic burials — ten acres for public graves and five acres for proprietary graves and a mortuary chapel. However, Bishop Dorrian wished to have exclusive control over the Catholic section so that he could consecrate it according to the rites of his Church, and he also considered the allocation insufficient for the city's growing Catholic population. The matter was brought before the Irish Privy Council in Dublin, with the prominent lawyer Isaac Butt representing Belfast's Catholics, but no satisfactory settlement could be reached. Even while the dispute continued, on 4 April 1869 Dorrian secured the support of his parishioners for purchasing separate land for a Catholic cemetery. He then approached James Ross, who agreed to sell fifteen acres on Falls Road, almost directly opposite the municipal cemetery, as a place of interment. The land was purchased by Dorrian and two others for £4,100. Dorrian considered the site superior as a place of interment because it had formerly been a brickyard from which much of the clay had already been removed.

The first burial at what would become generally known as Milltown Cemetery took place in November 1869. This was the funeral of Reverend Patrick Clarke, administrator of St Mary's Catholic Church in Belfast, who died suddenly on the 15th of that month. The Belfast Morning News reported a funeral procession of around 20,000 people making its way to the new Catholic cemetery on the Falls Road. The cemetery was consecrated on 18 September 1870, with an attendance estimated at over 20,000. The ceremony was performed by Bishop Dorrian with the assistance of Dr Grimley, Bishop of the Cape of Good Hope, and Mass was afterwards celebrated in a marquee erected near the centre of the cemetery.

The broader historical context for the cemetery's foundation was the rapid growth of Belfast as an industrial city in the 19th century. The Catholic population, previously relatively small, grew substantially as thousands of workers arrived from across Ulster and beyond. The principal Catholic burial place had been Friar's Bush graveyard in Stranmillis, which was becoming increasingly overcrowded, partly as a result of cholera epidemics and the Famine.

The cemetery is first shown on the 1901 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which also depicts a lodge near the entrance. By the time of the 1920–31 Ordnance Survey map, this lodge was marked as a Constabulary Barrack. Over the years the cemetery has been extended and now covers fifty-five acres.