Arbour Hill Military Cemetery and the Garrison School

Arbour Hill Military Cemetery is the last resting place of British military personnel and their families who died while serving in Ireland from 1840 to 1876. Most of the military personnel served in one of the barracks located in this area. Their families lived in the adjoining streets, while their children attended classes in the schoolhouses beside the cemetery., The headstones in the graveyard were moved to the boundary walls of the cemetery in the past. The inscriptions on the headstones give an insight into the people who lived in the Arbour Hill area in the mid-19th century. Soldiers of all ranks were interred here, along with their families, the headstones often detailing the countries served in, the circumstances of their deaths and the esteem they were held in by their fellow soldiers., Before the open memorial area you see now was created in 1955, the grounds here were divided into three areas (see map):, . The Arbour Hill prison parade ground, to the rear of the prison, was separated from the other two sections by a high wall., . The Garrison School playground- used by the children from the two schools beside the cemetery. Access from the schools was gained through a doorway in the boundary wall (there is no access through this door today)., . Arbour Hill Military Cemetery area , situated immediately behind the church., [Center left photo caption reads] , (left) A typical gravestone of the old cemetery, now positioned against a wall. It is dedicated to the five children of James and Barbara Taylor and reveals the hardships endured by people in the mid-nineteenth century. Buried somewhere in the graveyard are Frances Benjamin, Emily, Alfred Edward, Ann and Frances Henry all of whom predeceased their parents and never saw adulthood., By contrast, James Goodall Elkington, Esq., Staff Surgeon of the 17th Lancers, died aged 69 having survived both Wellington's Peninsula War and the Battle of Waterloo four decades earlier. By the late 1870s, Arbour Hill Barracks Cemetery had reached capacity and Grangegorman Military Cemetery was established nearby., [Bottom school illustration caption reads] , (below) The Garrison School was built in 1851 and was attended by both boys and girls. A second school for younger children, called the Victoria Kindergarten School, was built beside it in the 1890s. The children lived in the streets close to the school., [Grounds map and legend not transcribed], , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .