Mount Jerome Cemetery & Crematorium is situated in Harold's Cross on the south side of Dublin, Ireland. Since its foundation in 1836, it has witnessed over 300,000 burials. Originally an exclusively Protestant cemetery, Roman Catholics have also been buried there since the 1920s.

History

The name of the cemetery comes from an estate established there by the Reverend Stephen Jerome, who in 1639 was vicar of St. Kevin's Parish. At that time, Harold's Cross was part of St. Kevin's Parish. In the latter half of the 17th century, the land passed into the ownership of the Earl of Meath, who in turn leased plots to prominent Dublin families. A house, Mount Jerome House, was constructed in one of these plots, and leased to John Keogh. In 1834, after an aborted attempt to set up a cemetery in the Phoenix Park, the General Cemetery Company of Dublin bought the Mount Jerome property, "for establishing a general cemetery in the neighbourhood of the city of Dublin". The Funerary Chapel in the cemetery was the first Puginian Gothic church in Dublin. It was designed by William Atkins. The first official burial happened on the 19th of September 1836. The buried deceased were the infant twins of Matthew Pollock. The cemetery initially started with a landmass of 26 acres and grew to a size of 48 acres in 1874. In 1984, burial numbers were falling, thus the Cemetery was losing revenue and began to deteriorate. A crematorium was needed to regain revenue and deal with plant overgrowth on the estate. In 2000, Mount Jerome Cemetery established its own crematorium on the site.

Notable burials

Notable people buried here include: Basil Payne (1923-2012) poet Denis Keating (1935-2023) Physician, president of the Irish Gerontological Society. There is a large plot dedicated to deceased members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The cemetery contains the war graves of 35 British Commonwealth service personnel from World War I and 39 from World War II. The remains of French Huguenots from St. Peter's Churchyard, Peter's Row (now the location of the Dublin YMCA), which was demolished in the 1980s, and from St. Brigid's and St. Thomas's churchyards are interred in the cemetery. Over 200 children of unmarried mothers who died in the Protestant run Bethany Home were buried in unmarked graves in the cemetery. There is a plot where unnamed children from Kirwan House the Protestant run Female Orphan Home are buried. Recent burials include the notorious Martin Cahill (1949–1994) (known as "The General"). His gravestone has been vandalised on numerous occasions and is currently broken in two with the top half missing. His body has since been removed to an unmarked grave in the cemetery.

Flora

The cemetery has one of only two Christ-thorn bushes in Ireland (the other is in the Botanic Gardens).

Literary references