The Friar's Bush Hawthorn

Belfast's oldest Christian burial ground is named after this hawthorn. Under the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century, when the Mass was banned, Catholics gathered in secret beneath a thorn on this ground to hear it said. Belfast City Council and Northern Ireland's Remarkable Trees project tell it the same way, and the name stuck: Friar's Bush. The poet Joseph Campbell called it the Stranmillis trysting thorn. A darker version of the legend has a friar murdered and buried by the spot where he preached, with a stone laid over the grave. The tree itself is low and undramatic, reclining rather than standing, in the middle of the graveyard. Nobody has dated it and nobody has put a tape round it. Remarkable Trees puts the impression well: it may well bow down under the weight of its history. If you know an age or a girth for it, tell us, because we do not. Getting in takes a phone call. The graveyard is kept locked and Belfast City Council admits visitors on a booked slot, on 028 9027 0296 or by email, and guided tours run through Cairde na Cille and the Friends of Friar's Bush Graveyard. It costs nothing, there is no parking on site, and some paths are not passable in a wheelchair. Turning up unannounced gets you a look at the wall.