Huguenot Graveyard

Huguenot Graveyard

Photgraph showing the interior of the Huguenot graveyard, French Church Street

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Huguenot Graveyard
Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Huguenot Graveyard

Photgraph showing the interior of the Huguenot graveyard, French Church Street

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Enlarge image

In 1733 the Huguenots in Cork acquired property near their existing church on French Church Street, and began to use the newly-acquired property as a graveyard. The graveyard, which lies between French Church Street and Carey's Lane, is still in existence. Proposals to build a residential and commercial development over the graveyard were refused permission in 1990 and again in 2001. The proposals provoked protests from many people in Cork city, and from Huguenots and academics in the USA and the UK. In 2003 the Irish Huguenot Society proposed that the graveyard should be restored and used as a green area for visitors to the centre of Cork city. So far this proposal has not been implemented.

The tombstones visible in the photograph are set horizontally into the ground. This calls to mind some lines from a poem entitled 'Quakers' by the late Seán Dunne.

'Outside, their acre of graves

Shows names and dates like the flat

Covers of shut files.'

(Against the storm. Mountrath: Dolmen Press, 1985)

The Malet Tomb

John Malet tombstone

Photograph of the tombstone of John Adam Malet and Jane Malet

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

John Malet tombstone
Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

John Malet tombstone

Photograph of the tombstone of John Adam Malet and Jane Malet

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Enlarge image

The photograph shows the tombstone of John Adam Malet who was born in 1769 and died in 1813, and his wife Jane Malet who was born in 1779 and died in 1835. They are almost certainly the man and woman whose marriage is recorded in the Cork Evening Post on Thursday, 23 June 1796. The marriage notice reads :

'Yesterday at St. Mary Shandon, Mr John Malet of this city to Miss Jane Hudson daughter of Mr George Hudson of Newmarket'.

Malet is a Huguenot surname. James Malet, one of the sons of John Adam and Jane Malet, became Deacon of Cloyne in 1825, and later served as a curate in the Holy Trinity Church. Another son, also named John Adam Malet, was a fellow of Trinity College Dublin.