Milltown Cemetery

Milltown Cemetery holds two hundred thousand dead in fifty-five west Belfast acres, yet most graves remain unmarked because ordinary Catholics filled the poor ground before republicans claimed its name. Bobby Sands and seventy-seven IRA volunteers share space with fluent pandemic victims and Tom Williams, whose body waited fifty-eight years in a prison grave before returning home. The place resists simple meaning because Michael Stone killed three mourners during a funeral, proving even sacred ground cannot stop cruelty.