Old Meeting House Graveyard, Meeting House Lane, Church Street, Newry

The Old Meeting House Graveyard, located off Meeting House Lane and Church Street in Newry, is a graveyard enclosed by rubble stone walls. While possessing a long association with Christian worship in the area, it retains few features of particular merit. The graveyard is divided into two sections by a change in level and accessed via a narrow lane from Church Street. The majority of the graves date from the mid to late 19th century and are unremarkable.

A significant memorial, erected by Mr Henderson, owner of the Newry Telegraph, stands out. It is a large sandstone structure featuring four large, segmental-headed white marble tablets set into an ashlar sandstone wall. The wall has an incised frieze, now mostly illegible, and a moulded cornice. It is surmounted by the Newry coat of arms flanked by scrolled decorative corbels.

The original meeting house was erected in 1782, accommodating 350 worshippers, and the graveyard is of the same date. The building was repaired and enlarged in 1829. An Ordnance Survey map from 1835 identifies it as "Seeders’ meeting house." From 1840, this congregation became known as the "Second Newry" and relocated to a new church on Downshire Road in 1844. That same year, the Reformed Presbyterians purchased the site and used the church for worship, as shown on an 1861 Ordnance Survey map labelled “Reformed Presbyterian Meeting House”. The congregation subsequently moved to Riverside Presbyterian Church in 1884. The church fell into disuse and was eventually demolished in 1983, leaving only the graveyard.

The remains of the meeting house are visible as a rectangular outline of rubble stonework, approximately 30cm high, located at the south end of the site. The graveyard is currently recorded as derelict.