Families whose loved ones were buried in unmarked graves on the fringes of Milltown Cemetery have warned they will resume their weekly protest unless a key land transfer is completed. The land was inadvertently leased to the Ulster Wildlife Trust in 2000 by the Catholic Church but was due to be handed back to the cemetery trustees this year.
In December last year the Church announced that a commemorative garden would be built before Cemetery Sunday.
But Cemetery Sunday is expected to come and go this weekend without any resolution to the long-running saga.
It’s thought that up to 11,000 bodies could have been buried in the 5.9-acre plot, which once belonged to Milltown Cemetery but was leased to the UWT in 2000 and now forms part of the Bog Meadows nature reserve.
These remains were of both adults and hundreds of unbaptised babies and infants, buried between 1940 and the early 1980s.
Under the Church rules of the time, such children were not allowed to be laid to rest in sanctified ground.
Early last year archaeologists from Queen’s University confirmed that human remains lay in the ground. They used the same ground-penetrating radar technology that had been used to search for the remains of the Disappeared.
On Cemetery Sunday last year the land was consecrated by the Church and prayers said over the unmarked graves.
Heather Thompson, director of the UWT, said the group is in final negotiations with the Trustees of Milltown Cemetery to sell the land back. Because the original purchase was made using EU funding, the trust has had to ensure that the return of the land was fully compliant with European requirements.
The sale is being carried out in two tranches — first, a 1.14 hectare site where the babies are buried and which will be the location of the commemorative garden, and secondly, a larger section which the EU funders have yet to grant permission for selling.
“The main thing for the trust is that it was a mistake that we weren’t aware of when we went into this. We had been given assurances by Milltown Cemetery that there weren’t any burials when we went into it,” Ms Thompson said.
“We bought it on the valuation of the Land Property Services in 2000 and in order to facilitate negotiations we have had two independent valuations carried out.
“Land prices have shot up over that 10-year period and there has been a substantial increase in the value of the land. The land would have cost hundreds of pounds per acre then, now it’s tens of thousand per acre at current values. We have put forward a figure that is lower than those valuations.”
Ms Thompson said the trust has reached a stalemate in its negotiation with the Milltown trustees following six weeks of negotiation.
“We really want to get this moved forward as quickly as possible. We want to get the land back to Milltown Cemetery as quickly as possible,” she said.
Donna Hanvey of Relatives of the Milltown Babies, whose infant brother Michael was buried in the plot, said Japanese Knotweed is growing in the plot and if it isn’t treated during the growing season it will be next year before the commemorative garden can be built.
She called on the Milltown trustees to respond to the land price proposed by the Ulster Wildlife Trust last week.
“The work should have started already — if they don’t get the land handed over, we will go back out on protest,” she said.
Catholic Church spokesman Fr Eddie Magee said an agreement had been reached between the relatives, trust and trustees in December.
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