New cemetery project

We manage three 'active' cemeteries - Belfast City Cemetery, Dundonald Cemetery and Roselawn Cemetery - where burials still take place.

From the three, Roselawn Cemetery is the only graveyard where new burial plots are available.

However, as the cemetery becomes increasingly full, we need to think about how we will manage burials within the greater Belfast area in the future.

What are the options?

Finding a new cemetery site is a long and rigorous process. It involves assessing ground conditions and considering the environmental impact of using land for burials.

In 2007, we drew up a shortlist of four potential locations for a new cemetery.

The sites were:

Drumbeg (near Lisburn)
Hightown (in Newtownabbey)
Lisleen (in the Castlereagh Hills)
Nutts Corner (in Antrim).

Following a preliminary assessment of each location, we reduced the shortlist to two sites - Lisleen and Nutts Corner.

Further assessment of these sites began in January 2009.