Antrim's forgotten artist
Thursday, 5 April 2018
WHEN trying to count the souls sleeping under the sod of an old churchyard, it is often wiser to count blades of grass rather than headstones.
Take All Saints' Church in Antrim, for example. It is flanked on three sides by graves, some dating back to the 16th century and others older still scrubbed clean by time.
It is estimated that more than 8,000 people were laid to rest in a site no larger than many back gardens.
There are marbled monuments to the great and good, men like Dr Alexander Irvine who rose from the aching poverty of his slum in Pogue's Entry to dine with Royals and Presidents.
But most are unmarked, un-mourned and unloved. Yet the forgotten dead are far from unremarkable.
Indeed, among their number is a man who did arguably more than any other to catalogue for posterity the changing face of Ireland - only to be rewarded with decades of obscurity following his own untimely death.
That man was George Victor Du Noyer...
*In this week's Antrim Guardian, read the story of how one of Ireland's greatest ever artists is buried in an unmarked grave in Antrim
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