Blessing at Down High £33m site for workhouse reburials

Blessing at Down High £33m site for workhouse reburials

25 October 2023

A CEREMONY has been held at the site of Down High School’s new £33m campus in Downpatrick to mark the reinterment of human remains from a 19th century graveyard close to the town’s former workhouse. 

Last Friday, all construction work at the expansive site was suspended to allow for a short religious service, with Dean Henry Hull joined by Canon John Murray, Ballynahinch Baptist Church elder Richard Daniells and school principal Mrs Maud Perry.

The Union workhouse on the Strangford Road opened in 1842 and became increasingly full as a consequence of both disease and the upsurge in destitution during the Famine years.

An archaeological survey, conducted by Gahan and Long Archaeological Services and under the superintendency of the Historic Environment Division of the Department of Communities, had exhumed and analysed a total of 943 bodies during a painstaking excavation of the site.

The remains were reburied last Friday in a designated plot of land adjacent to a second pauper graveyard to the north of the new build site.

The remains were carefully arranged by archaeologists and reburied during a respectful process

With paupers in the workhouse reflecting the diversity of the population, local clergy were invited oversee the blessing of the remains in the new plot, with a small group of representatives from the Education Authority, Down High, Gahan and Long, McAdam Design and Graham Construction also in attendance at the outdoor service. 

A larger, second commemorative event will be held for a range of invited guests once the school building work is complete.

Explanatory signage will be installed at the graveyards and there will be a dedicated permanent exhibition charting not just the history of Down High School since its opening in 1933, but also the historical significance of the new site. 

A number of artefacts relating to the workhouse were discovered during the excavation as was evidence of a Bronze Age settlement, underlining the importance of the Downpatrick area extending back into pre-history and providing further evidence of settlements in the locality before the arrival of Christianity. 

These important historical findings will be signposted and explained as part of the narration on the site of the new school, which is due to open in 2025.

The first sod at the site was cut last October and significant progress has been made on the construction of the new multi-million pound school which will accommodate almost 1,000 students.