Fennell-Stelfox Memorial, Belfast City Cemetery, Falls Road, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 6DE

This Gothic Revival memorial, dating from 1876 and probably designed by James Stelfox, stands in Belfast City Cemetery on the Falls Road. It commemorates the Fennell and Stelfox families, two households connected through the Macilwaine family.

The Monument

The memorial takes the form of a tall pointed sandstone arch. The upper section features elaborate open tracery, while the lower section contains two marble memorial plaques separated by a central column. The column has roses carved into its capital, with a triple cluster column at each end. The plaque on the left commemorates the Fennell family; that on the right commemorates the Stelfox family. The families' names are engraved on a splayed sandstone base set upon a plain sandstone plinth. The burial plot is marked at its corners by square plan sandstone piers with squat pyramidal coping stones.

Historical Context

In the nineteenth century Belfast expanded rapidly, placing intense pressure on existing burial grounds. Cholera outbreaks and the Great Famine exacerbated the problem, overcrowding Shankill graveyard, Friar's Bush graveyard, and the New Burying Ground at Clifton Street. A new Presbyterian cemetery at Balmoral provided only partial relief. In autumn 1865, Belfast Corporation accepted Thomas Sinclair's offer of 101 acres on the Falls Road. The purchase was completed in December 1865 for £12,000 with an annual ground rent of £73 5s. 4d. Of this, 45 acres would serve as a cemetery, with the remainder becoming Falls Park. On 25 January 1867, the Cemetery Committee awarded the contract to design the new cemetery to William Gay of Bradford. A dispute with Dr Patrick Dorrian, Catholic bishop of Down and Connor, over Catholic burial ground led to the opening of a separate Catholic cemetery, Milltown, on the opposite side of the Falls Road in November 1869. Belfast City Cemetery opened on 1 August 1869, with the first burials three days later.

The Families Commemorated

The Fennell-Stelfox monument commemorates two families united by marriage and grief. In 1869, Jane (Jennie) Macilwaine, daughter of Reverend William Macilwaine, rector of St George's Church in Belfast, married James Stelfox, a gas engineer. The following year, Jane's sister Mary married John George Fennell, son of Robert Fennell. Both marriages took place at St John's Church, Malone.

The poignancy of the monument lies in its earliest inscriptions. George Frederick Fennell died on 16 December 1876, aged 5. The very next day, his cousin Jennie Stelfox died, aged 2. The two bereaved families acquired adjoining burial plots and erected a single monument to their shared loss.

James Stelfox was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1842. Ten years later he moved to Belfast following his father's appointment as manager of the Belfast Gasworks. In 1875, James succeeded his father as manager, a position he held for approximately thirty years before retiring. He was responsible for notable architecture at the Gasworks site and has been described as a man who combined a deep love for classical architecture with technical talent for up-to-date methods and materials. He died on 11 September 1910. The family lived at Oakleigh in Ormeau Park, Belfast. His wife Jane died nine years before him, on 27 September 1901.

James Stelfox's son, Arthur Wilson Stelfox (born 1883), studied architecture under William John Fennell and established an independent practice in Belfast before moving to Dublin. He became better known as a naturalist and entomologist and for his contributions to these disciplines merits an entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. He died in 1972 and was buried in the family plot in Belfast City Cemetery.

John George Fennell died at the age of 40 on 27 July 1885 at the Muckross Hotel in Killarney, presumably while on holiday. His wife Mary died in 1932, aged 85. Of their children, William Bertram Fennell studied architecture and established a partnership with John Charles Lepper in 1899, though he later abandoned this to become a motor engineer. On the City Cemetery burial register his occupation is listed as architect.

The Fennell-Stelfox monument possesses architectural and historical interest in its own right and holds group value with the other listed memorials in the cemetery.