Newry, October 2019: in search of two Johns.

I had originally planned to post on this adventure at a later point in time, but John Mitchel's statue is a hot topic in Ireland right now, so I might as well discuss his (very mysterious) grave.

Unfortunately, I have very little to show of our day in Newry, because I actually lost the phone I took pictures with (I was very bad and had only saved one). But there is still an urban explorer's adventure story to tell, so I'm telling it, and as compensation here is me on my cliff-hamoc during our "Wild Atlantic" hike the next day:

So let's be serious for a minute; "Why is John Mitchel such hot topic in June 2020 Ireland?", wonders the non-Irish reader (if you already know all about him, you can skip the next two paragraphs). The reason is that we are in the middle of a world-wide #BlackLivesMatter wave of protests, and calls are being made for statues of former colonisers and slavery-defenders to be taken down, or at least contextualised. "But I thought you were into Irish republicans? They can't have been colonisers if they were fighting colonisation in their country, right?" Well, actually, they can, and some of them have, but that's not the problem with Mitchel (yep, it's slavery). He is a particularly sharp rock in Ireland's shoe, one of these people who can't ever be quite classified as completely good or bad, whatever your political views are. He was the most radical member of the romantic nationalist movement Young Ireland in the 1840s, got deported to Australia, escaped to the United-States, wrote classic books about British colonisation and prisons, and died in Ireland in 1875 just after returning and getting elected to Parliament (and declared inelligible due to his past sentences).

A true national hero, fitting the most hard-core republican standards, and he was never a coloniser or a slave-owner. But while he was living in the US (first in New-York, then in Tennessee), he repeatedly defended slavery (and not even out of self-interest!), saying American slaves were better treated than poor Irish peasants or English industrial workers. He actively supported the Confederacy in the Civil War, and two of his sons died fighting it. An ideological endorsement that has regularly made Irish people wonder whether keeping his statue in Newry is such a good idea after all. It is not my place as a foreigner to decide on such a controversial national issue, but the debate is definitely worth having, do look into it if you have time.

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Let's go back to the mid-1870s, as you must be wondering to which cemetery this is going and who the mysterious second John could be. I'll end your agony right now: he is John Martin, Mitchel's best friend and fellow-nationalist activist, and also his brother-in-law. Martin was a Young Irelander like Mitchel, and very much under the political influence of his friend in their youth. As they grew older, their views grew apart. Martin was part of the 1848 rising and got deported for it, but unlike his friend, he refused to escape from the Australian transportation colony, and when he came back to Ireland after his pardon he quickly embraced the liberal identity politics most of the Catholic middle-class were defending (he was a Protestant landowner himself), and often wrote against revolutionary republicans. He also disagreed with his best friend's defence of slavery, as did most influential nationalists. Yet that disagreement was not of a nature to question their friendship, or Mitchel's status as one of the greatest national heroes, dead or living.

Mitchel died in Newry on 20 March 1875, just a few days after getting re-elected. He was buried on a particularly rainy Monday, and while at his funeral his best friend caught the cold that finally killed him on 29 March. These two Irishmen who shared a first name, a geographical origin, Protestant beliefs, an involvement in nationalist activities, and family ties, ended up dying within days of each other. Of course I had to have a trip to Newry and look for their graves. So we used our second hiking trip to Northern Ireland to stop there. And now the adventure starts, and you'll see it required us to be stubborn!

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Newry is the first major town after crossing the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. The approach by car is lovely, as the town appears quite suddenly, nested between the side of a hill and the sea. I thought Mitchel's grave would be easy to find - such a national figure! - but it was actually a long, eventful quest, and I might as well spoil it for you: we did not see it in the end! (you can find a few pictures online, though). For some strange reason, my Maps app was giving me its location at Saint Patrick's graveyard, at the top of the aptly-named High Street (it is steep, and the view is gorgeous, you should go!). But we kept going around in circles and couldn't find it. A quick online search with a picture of the grave confirmed the building behind it was not Saint Patrick's Church.

I knew Mitchel had been a Unitarian, so we went looking for the Unitarian Church (Saint Patrick's is Anglican). We found it, but there was no graveyard surrounding it! While we were roaming around it, we ended up facing the National Foresters Club Rooms. The National Forsters are a nationalist friendly organisation, mostly extinct in the South but still active in the North. If anyone knew where Mitchel's grave was, they would! And they did, but we still would not be able to access it. They told us the graveyard was close by, at the bottom of High Street, but behind closed doors. We're not the type to give up so easily, so we still went. We easily found the Convent of Poor Clares, behind which the graveyard is:

Both pictures by ©Eric Jones, there are more here: https://www.geograph.ie/photo/5067653

One of the doors even had a sign indicating there was indeed a graveyard behind, and I was able to spot a grave through the keyhole. And it did not look like it was a 19th century grave, so families must still be visiting. But no access, and no opening hours. I would not drop it (and neither would Cédric, he had followed me thus far, it should not be all for nothing), and I actually found a Facebook page where someone had shared pictures from within. There must be a way in! So we went around High Street through Abbey Way, tried every side entrance we could find, and circled around the nearby Lidl trying to find a hole in the wall somewhere.

When none of this worked, we discreetly slipped through a badly-closed gate into a forest of weeds and leafy plants (by then I started feeling like Alice in Wonderland, except Wonderland looked bleak), after which we found ourselves in an abandoned school yard. Crossing it, we spotted a hole in the fence and were able to crouch through it into some kind of meadow, right behind the cemetery. A man was sleeping in his car, and to this day I still can't understand how he managed to get it there! This was the most frustrating time in the whole day: we could see some of the graves behind the wall and high fence, and there was even one small and one large metal gates, but everything was perfectly locked and our rule-breaking attitude had limits (plus I was wearing a skirt). We still tried to go around the Convent some other way. Coming up High Street, there was a lane leading to a small community centre right behind the cemetery (go to maps, type "John Mitchel's Grave Newry" and then look for the Three Ways Community Centre, you'll see how frustrating this whole thing is).

We finally gave up and decided to go back to the car and look for John Martin's grave before it got too late and too dark. I was worried because I'd initially thought he would be much harder to find than Mitchel, as I'd had trouble gathering information before we left. Hi estate was called Donaghmore/Donoughmore. But the Donaghmore I found was too far from Newry for the funeral procession to have walked there, and Donoughmore led me to counties Cork or Laois. One account mentioned the graveyard was close to Loughorne and we found a Loughorne Road a few miles North of Newry, so we went. And we found him! Just a few minutes away from the A1 Motorway! (by the way, it's really weird that houses are so close to the motorway in this country, and that cars sometimes have to cross to get out of it, like we had to that day). We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere (we could still hear the road, though), with this tiny curchyard on top of a small hill at a crossroads, and just the one house next to it.

Martin's tombstone is the only picture I have from that fateful day. It reads:

John Martin

Born 8th September 1812

Died 29th March 1875

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He lived for his country, suffered in her cause, fled for her wrongs, and died beloved and lamented for every true-hearted Irishman.