placenamesShankill
The old graveyard in Lurgan preserves evidence of changing burial practices and the parish’s experience of famine mortality.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Shankill · English · main form
Place & story
The earlier parish church
The Brownlow burial vault occupies the site of the earlier parish church in Shankill graveyard. Francis X. McCorry’s study records the vestry’s decision in 1718 to seek a new church site at Lurgan Green. The old church was subsequently demolished and the family vault erected on its site. [2]
A rector challenges a burial taboo
Arthur Fforde, rector from 1748 until his death in 1767, requested burial north of the former church. His memorial inscription explains that he intended to counter a belief that this ground was unholy. This records an explicitly challenged local belief, rather than evidence for any supernatural property of the site. McCorry also documents the repair of Fforde’s broken memorial in September 2002. [2]
The register in 1847
McCorry transcribes curate W. Oulton’s record of 492 burials at Shankill in 1847, including 229 people from the workhouse. These are graveyard totals: they do not represent every death in Lurgan workhouse, whose dead were also buried elsewhere. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Civil parish
- County
- Armagh
- Barony
- Oneilland East
- Coordinates
- 54.45474, -6.35774 (approximate)
- Mapped area
- 19.29 km²
- Logainm ID
- 2741 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Shankill. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Shankill Graveyard, Lurgan, Review8:2 (2003) · Francis X. McCorry, Craigavon Historical Society
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-12-20. How this page was prepared.