Kilbride Graveyard

Situated on an elevated site overlooking the village of Doagh and with magnificent views along the Sixmilewater Valley, Kilbride graveyard has been a place of burial for centuries. Though Kilbride Presbyterian Church is located beside the old graveyard it has no connection with it other than the fact that families associated with this congregation would have buried here. The graveyard is in the care of Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

No trace survives of the pre-reformation parish church – the ‘Church of St Bride (or Brigid)’ – that once stood here. In the Ordnance Survey Memoir of the parish of Kilbride, dating from the late 1830s, it is stated that the foundations of the church, which measured 68 feet by 30 feet, had recently been removed. The Memoir also noted that the ‘oldest tombstone bears the date of 1674. There are several others bearing dates from 1676 to 1699. The name of Smith is that on the oldest stones.’

By far, the most interesting feature in this graveyard – and surely one of the most remarkable in any Ulster graveyard – is the mausoleum erected in memory of the Stephenson family. It has been likened to the Taj Mahal and was possibly inspired by the Indian associations of one of those interred in it. It was built of Tardree stone in the late 1830s at a cost of £1,300, paid for by Dr Samuel Martin Stephenson.

He was born at Straidballymorris, near Templepatrick, in 1742, the son of James Stephenson, a farmer, and his wife Margaret Martin. After completing his studies at Glasgow University, he was ordained minister of Greyabbey Presbyterian Church in 1774. While he was minister of Greyabbey he studied medicine and in 1785 left the congregation to become a full time doctor.

Samuel Stephenson died in 1833 aged 91 after a distinguished career in medicine. His son Samuel Martin Stephenson junior was Superintendent Surgeon of the Madras Presidency; he died in 1834 aged 50. The iron door of the mausoleum bears the legend, ‘Rowan, Doagh, 1837’. This refers to John Rowan who operated the forge in Doagh.

Immediately on the east side of the Stephenson mausoleum is a row of four headstones commemorating members of the Galt family. One these was erected in memory of the famous William Galt who died in 1812 aged 61. You can more about his interesting life here.

One of the most interesting inscriptions is found on the headstone to one of William Galt's friends, John Alexander of Doagh, a remarkable inhabitant of Doagh. The inscription tells us that he was ‘a patriot, a philanthropist and an honest man, the early friend and advocate of Sabbath School Education’. He was the John Alexander who had been gaoled for a time in 1796 and whose potato crop had been harvested by over 1,000 people who had gathered at Doagh to show their sympathy for him.

John Alexander died in 1864 aged 63. According to his obituary in The Rushlight, ‘possessing some comic powers, he at different times played the chief characters in several comedies acted in Doagh’ (The Rushlight, no. 3, vol. 1 (17 Dec. 1824), p. 23). John Alexander was also well-known locally as a collector of ‘antiquities and other curiosities’.

Standing near the east wall of the graveyard, though now so overgrown that it can easily be overlooked, is a corpse house, or mort safe. This was built in the early 1830s at a time when the threat from body-snatchers was at its height and is one of a number of contemporaneous corpse houses that stand in graveyards in this part of County Antrim.

It was built following a meeting that was held in the graveyard on 29 January 1831. Those gathered had some claim to burial rights here. Among the rules drafted was that any body placed in the corpse house should be removed at the end of six weeks; a body not removed by the family by then would be removed after seven weeks and the family would forfeit any future right to the use of the building.

Standing a short distance to the east of the Stephenson mausoleum is a headstone commemorating the well-known local writer Florence Mary McDowell. Born in Doagh in 1888, she was daughter of William Lenox Dugan, who was originally from Castlerock in County Londonderry, and his wife Mary Jane, nee Kidley.

Her childhood home was Bridge House just north of the village. In 1903 she began a long teaching career as a monitor in Cogry Mills National School. In her later years she wrote two books, Other days around me and Roses and rainbows, which vividly recaptured everyday life in late Victorian and Edwardian Doagh. She died on 11 March 1976 aged 87.