Victorian Cemetery In Harold’s Cross
My Grandparents on my father’s side of the family are buried here as are are some other members of the extended family. When I returned to Dublin from the USA in the 1980s I lived beside the cemetery for an extended period and unfortunately the cemetery was in very condition and was being vandalised on a daily basis. In 1998 the cemetery was acquired by Masseys and they undertook major renovation programme which has produced excellent results. In 2000 they reported that about 4,000 new and unused plots have been identified and according to manager of Mount Jerome, Alan Massey, it represented up to 20 years supply.
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.
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 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.
The Funerary Chapel in the cemetery was the first Puginian Gothic church in Dublin. It was designed by William Atkins.
In 2000, Mount Jerome Cemetery established its own crematorium on the site. Recently I attended a number of humanist funerals at MountJerome and I must admit that I was impressed by the services and the overall process.
A humanist funeral is a ceremony that celebrates the life of someone who’s died, without mentioning religion or a god. Humanist funeral services are usually led by a celebrant, who guides guests through the readings and music much like a priest/vicar would in a Christian service.
