Belfast City Cemetery, with Tom Hartley

Historical Belfast

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More Stories from Belfast City Cemetery is the latest addition to Tom Hartley’s ‘Written in Stone’ series of books that use the story of each of Belfast’s cemeteries to explore the dynamic history of our city and its people. From Catholic to Protestant to Muslim and Jew, from the great and the good to the poor and the destitute, each grave has multiple stories to tell. Since the publication of the previous edition of his Belfast City Cemetery book in 2014, Tom Hartley has continued to research the graves and the stories connected to them.

The new edition looks at further stories that tell the history of Belfast from the political strife of internment and conflict related deaths to those who lost their lives in industrial accidents in its shipyards and linen mills. It is the story of a dynamic city shaped by many fascinating and remarkable people.

Tom Hartley is, arguably, one of those fascinating and remarkable people himself.

He is perhaps best known for his political activism spanning over 50 years which saw him serve as General Secretary and the National Chairperson of Sinn Fein before being elected for the party as a City Councillor in 1993 and going on to be the city’s Lord Mayor from 2008-2009.

In his spare time, however, Tom pursues his love of history and is one of Belfast’s foremost public historians delivering tours and authoring books which highlight the importance of our burial sites as a repository of the political, social and economic history of Belfast.

Tom is supremely wise and endlessly witty – an absolute pleasure to sit down and talk history with. We met at the James Connolly Visitor Centre on the Falls Road, and I began by asking him about his first memories of the Belfast City Cemetery…

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