Details have emerged of the plan for a proposed new crematorium in Belfast, close to the current building at Roselawn cemetery.
An £18 million plan for two new chapels at Ballygowan Road was approved by elected representatives at Belfast council’s recent remote meeting of its Strategic Policy and Resources Committee.
The current building at Roselawn is Northern Ireland’s only crematorium, with only six in total on the island of Ireland.
A council officer told the Belfast committee: “We have been working on a detailed design with the design team and they put forward three different options. The committee previously agreed the new crematorium would have two times two hundred chapels.
“However there is a recognition that a 200 seater chapel is actually quite big, and that there needed to be a way to be more sympathetic in the design to services which are smaller in number.”
Councillors were given three options, the first involving buildings with a provision of 200 seats on ground level and the possibility to partition space with a moveable wall and curtain.
Option two involved a 150 seat capacity in the main halls, with the possibility to include entrance halls through a moveable acoustic screen, providing overall a 200 seat capacity.
Option three involved a provision of a 160 ground floor seat capacity and a 40 seat mezzanine, as recommended by the crematorium working group. Councillors voted for this option.
A council report states: “The integration of a function room in the new crematorium would create the same challenges in the flow of people as in the existing building. This was also supported by the crematorium manager who highlighted the operational challenges of a function room in the same building as the chapels where the services take place.”
The officer said the design team was thinking of keeping the function room in the existing building, with no proposals for new function rooms in the new buildings.
