FRESH back from a successful series of tours during Féile an Phobail, a popular Irish language history tour of Belfast’s cemeteries is back to celebrate the European Heritage Weekend over 10 and 11 September.
Seán Fennell who took the successful tours ‘Graveyard Raiders’ is organising a tour of Belfast City Cemetery and Milltown Cemetery, allowing those taking part to dive into the world of well-known people and events from the city's past – from rebels, to shipbuilders, writers and footballers from the heyday of the mighty Belfast Celtic.
Seán described what was on offer on his tour, which will be conducted through Irish, but will be open to anyone with any level of the language.
“Fionntán Ó Mealláin and I compiled an Irish language school resource based on the local history of the City Cemetery, and it led to me doing tours with schools with three or four taking part already and publishing some books.”
The first tour, on 10 September will focus on Belfast City Cemetery. Seán spoke about what the tour would entail.
“The City Cemetery tour focuses on the industrialisation of Belfast, and we’ll touch on some of the subjects associated with that, such as the Titanic and the Shipyard. We also visit the graves of community activists such as Terry Enright. We also visit some graves of those who helped build the Irish language movement in Belfast and were from a Protestant/unionist background, such as Liam Andrews and we talk about how everyone owns the Irish language. Following this, we will also see the grave of Kieran Nugent, who was one of the first blanketmen.”
The second tour, on 11 September will take in some of the many famous graves in Milltown Cemetery. S
"Milltown will see us diving into a lot of Irish history, especially as we are 100 years on from the death of Michael Collins," said Seán. "We will also be focusing on the Irish Civil War, the partition of Ireland and the foundation of the Northern state.
"Some of the graves we will visit will be to do with Belfast history, such as Joe McKelvey and those who died in the pogroms 100 years ago, like the McMahon family, as well as visiting the grave of 1940’s Hunger Striker Sean McCaughey.”
Each tour will take place from 10am to 12pm on 10 and 11 September. People are asked to meet Seán at the main gate of Belfast City and Miltown Cemetery and the tours will commence from there. Tickets cost £5.
