Explore Friar's Bush Graveyard Tours

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Friar's Bush Cemetery, Cairde na Cille's first volunteer project

Be inspired by our volunteers' graveyard restoration, with 70 monuments restored and counting. Please help us maintain the graves we reclaimed and to restore many more. Please donate for gloves tools, expenses and legal administration!

Tours and Events for All

Find the perfect tour or event to enjoy the graveyard we restored from dereliction

Cill Pádraig, Baile Bhaile na mBráthar: Ait spioradálta na nGael

• Camchuairt, caint, ceol, cultúr agus craic

• Stair agus scéalta, athbheochan

• Ní fhaighimid pingin rua poiblí

• Turas/Imeactaí ó £5

• Bí i dteagmháil linn!

Friar's Bush: Preserving Belfast's Ancient Graveyard Heritage

Cairde na Cille, meaning Friends of the Churchyard, a non-profit based in Belfast, is transforming Friar's Bush graveyard from dereliction and neglect to a pleasant outdoor space for all to enjoy and attend events.

1500+

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Community-driven transformation

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A short story about us

In 2021 during a lockdown reprieve, our creator Deirdre, noticed that the gates of Friar's Bush Cemetery in Belfast were still not open. After a little investigating and many rabbit holes of research, an all-consuming lockdown and post-lockdown project started that would involve chatting or consulting with dozens of community members about what should/could be done with this seriously neglected, overgrown significant ancient Belfast graveyard, for the good of the citizens. Meetings, phone-calls and email communications, too many to count, were exchanged and arranged with a few hundred community representatives including Stranmillis local residents, Somerton Road Catholic hierarchy and a trail of artisans,architects and artistes and not forgetting local Belfast historians/guides and archaeologists, including the late Dr Eamon Phoenix, Dr Eileen Murphy, Ruairí Ó Baoill and Tom Hartley and others like John Bradbury and Brendan Muldoon who contributed enormously to the exciting unfolding and ever-evolving flagship project conceived by Dr Deirdre Nic an tSionnaigh Fox: Friar's Bush Reimagined.

All agreed that Friar's Bush Graveyard was a heritage site well worth saving, that it needed a community-driven approach, that the council needed to be consulted but reminded about its obligations under The Belfast Agenda towards community ownership, social enterprise, social, cultural and community development and of course community tourism. Irish heritage and language activists added their half-penny's worth including the late Muiris Ó Brollacháin, Marcas Ó Murchú, Aidan Jefferies and Pat McKay about the lost opportunity to promote a story of ancient Irish culture that could rival the heritage burial sites around Ireland's Ancient East or the Wild Atlantic Way. In the words of Tom Hartley "You cannot tell the history of Belfast without telling the history of Friar's Bush Graveyard!". "Friar's Bush...A place dear to my heart", the late Eamon Phoenix enthused. "Seo go díreach an stair nach ndeántar ar scoil...stair na gclann, stair na nGael , sean-stair na hÉireann (agus le ceol!) a dúirt Marcas ó Murchú (This is exactly the history that's not taught at school, the history of the clans, the ancient history of Ireland (and with music!) remarked Marcas Ó Murchú.

Belfast City Council were fully engaged from August 2022 and permission was requested about running tours and seeking to acquire a lease on the derelict gatehouse to restore it for the community. A community interest company was set up in December 2022 (Cairde na Cille CIC) to ensure that there would be a good governance structure whilst enabling a flexible approach to developing and championing the project. In the haste to get as many board members involved as possible, mistakes were made. It takes special people to champion a project seeking to inspire people about a very special place: we have learned the hard way that a fledgling community organisation with a big heart, tremendous goodwill, significant creativity and energetic spirit can be vulnerable. We are proud that our current CIC Board and wider Strategic Volunteer Interest Group have no hidden agendas, conflicting personal/political interests that their values, ethics and moral compass align perfectly with those of Cairde an Cille... We put community at the heart of all that we do. This is why we chose to set up our own volunteering project when the Council refused to restore or tidy up the graveyard until earnest volunteers embarrassed them into doing some of the grass-cutting. This is why we are meticulously pursuing the aim of acquiring a lease and proper long-term arrangement for this heritage green space and building for the community's benefit. This is why we chose to pursue our own original creative ideas about plans, programmes, tours, events and our own depth of historical research. We have refused to let ourselves be misled or distracted by a commercial agenda or exploitative attempts to steal/imitate our project, devalue our volunteering efforts and our ideas. No matter how many of our posters and poster boxes are defaced, taken down or stolen, we will remain more resolute than ever with an even stronger more motivated loyal team to continue to fight for this precious heritage place for the good of our community. Nothing and no-one will get in our way. We will overcome every obstacle bureaucrats and charlatans may place in our path. "As a bhealach!" "Get out of our way!" Cairde na Cille CIC is indominable because we are on a mission!

Cairde na Cille (Friends of the Churchyard)

The proceeds of Cairde na Cille's official friar's Bush Tours go towards restoration of Friar's Bush Graveyard. Bookable directly on this site and with Visit Belfast, there are tours every Sunday at 12:00 year round and on occasional weekdays (Tuesday or Wednesdays) that we hope to increase to daily when we acquire a lease on the Gatehouse at Friar's Bush. Our tours are authentic, no-holes barred balanced expeditions into our ancient and Victorian-era past. The fascinating story of Friar's Bush on our Whistlestop Tour will transport you back 2 millennia! We also have monthly Graves and Gardens Tours that include a tour of the neighbouring Botanic Gardens, once part of the same larger ecclesiastical site! We believe friar's Bush was a place of special pilgrimage and we also are convinced it is Belfast's oldest graveyard. The site holds particular significance for the Catholics of Belfast. But we also like to point out the shared heritage of this site. Look out for our special seasonal tours and events including Halloween, Beltane, Lúnasa, St Patrick's and Imbolg. Our tour guides are engaging and passionate. (Some say entertaining and highly informative). We look forward to welcoming you on our enthralling tours!

The beneficiaries impacted by our work so far include the local community, especially economically-deprived who have been locked out of heritage spaces for decades, now able to access and enjoy them freely appreciating the heritage in authentic tours and cultural events. Volunteers transforming the green space at our Friar's Bush Reimagined flagship project have benefited from improved wellbeing, camaraderie, a sense of belonging and ownership, new practical gardening skills and resilience-building for work opportunities, stress and relationships. (

We meet once or twice weekly in a warm welcoming group. To join our volunteering team email us on mail@cairdenacille.org today. We champion biodiversity in the graveyard e.g. retaining vegetation tackled/tidied up within the green space, conserving the unique ecosystem naturally established there. (This means all the little bugs, snails, singed insects and pollinators all stay within the old graveyard walls! We have plans for large composting and mulching to facilitate our biodiversity and a pollinating programme for increased bees and other insects to help tackle climate change pressures. We are open and diverse, welcoming all religions and none, all races, abilities and LGBTQ into our inclusive community.

Friar's Bush Graveyard Gallery

Explore the transformation of Friar's Bush graveyard in Belfast, 2023-2025. Copyright images and text Cairde na Cille CIC