A grey stone wall at the end of a Belfast street hides centuries of the city’s history, local historians say.
Knock Burial Ground has stories to tell spanning the years from Saint Columba in mid 500s to the well heeled of Belfast’s Victorian era.
Yet it sits at the end of an East Belfast street largely ignored by the masses who drive past it day and daily on the Knock dual-carriageway.
Belfast Live visited the site, at the end of Knockmount Park near PSNI HQ, to discover a neglected cemetery with headstones sinking into the rolling hill which gives the site its name.
Knock, like many local ‘Knocks’ including Knockbreda, stems from the Irish for hill or Cnoc. It is at this spot, overlooking the Clarawood and Cherryvalley areas, that St Columba, or Colm Cille, is said to have stopped to pray on his way to Movilla Abbey in Newtownards to be trained by Saint Finnian.
The name Knock is an abbreviated form of Knockcolumkill, or Cnoc Cholm Cille, the hill of St Colmcille, according to the Gaelic History of East Belfast, by Gordon McCoy.
The book adds that there was a well of St Colmcille, but that it was filled in in the 1920s by Shandon Golf Club. Shandon plays a further part in the history here, with most local history buffs being aware of the Shandon Park Mound which is believed to be an old Norman motte. It can be reached by a path between numbers 45 and 47 Shandon Park.
The establishment of the church at Knock is thought to be linked to there being a ‘manorial-type Anglo Norman establishment’ nearby. That motte is believed to have been built on an old ring fort or rath many of which can be seen on the hills around Belfast.
A church at Knock, known as Dundela, passed from the Anglo-Normans to the Clandeboye O’Neills in the 13th century. The Belfast City Council history of the site says that a taxation document from 1306 shows that it was valued at 40 shillings.
By 1622, it adds, Knock Columkille was transformed for Anglican worship and used until 1637 when it was abandoned in favour of a new parish church, now known as Knockbreda, in the nearby townland of Breda.
The site was used as a graveyard, however. According to a 1902 account, McCoy’s book says, what was left of the church there was demolished to make way for more graves. A drawing from 1835, however, shows the east and west walls still intact.
In his book Knock, Aidan Campbell describes how a Knock House sat next to the cemetery where a Daniel McLorinan lived. According to the 1834 Ordnance Survey, he adds, the building dated back to the 1820s.
It is also recorded that in 1863, opposite the cemetery at what is now Ascot Park, John Gelston lived in a house that was known as Knock Farm and later as Eden House. It was demolished in the 1930s.
There are several Gelston headtsones in the cemetery and the site at the junction of the Belmont and Holywood roads where the Strand Cinema sits is known as Gelston’s Corner.
Many of the headstones still visible at the site are large and ornate and appear to indicate a certain grandeur. Place names at individual plots show many burials from local districts like Ballymacarrett, Gilnahirk, Crossnacreevy, Lisnabreeny, Ballynafeigh and Mountpottinger.
As with gravestones in any Victorian era cemetery, there are the tales of the children, one, two or even three or more in one family, who ‘died young’.
Robert McCullough, from Ballyhackamore, had a headstone erected in memory of six children ‘who died young’. He passed away in 1898. A grave marked ‘Kyle’ pays tribute to five children lost at an early age.
Many of the names are familiar, like Frew or Jackson, but some less so like McClatworthy or Pullar. Tragedy in later life marks some inscriptions like Samuel McCune who ‘drowned at Miramichi’ a port in northern New Brunswick in Canada. A Robert Wheeler also had a nautical tale in his demise as he died in Sunderland in 1852 in the ‘faithful discharge of his duty’ as master of the brig Millman.
The cemetery is locked, but can be accessed by ringing Dundonald Cemetery at 02890480193.
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