The graves of thousands of people in a famine-era Belfast burial ground are finally set to be officially marked.
In the late 1840s, the three-acre site began to be used to bury people from a nearby workhouse during the Great Famine. It closed for this use in the early 1900s.
Historians estimate more than 10,000 bodies were buried there.
A housing development is now located on the site just off Donegall Road in Belfast, close to the City Hospital.
There is nothing in the area to indicate the graves beneath the streets and Belfast City Council is now planning to mark the burial ground and commemorate the lives of the people interred there.
Belfast historian Dr Robyn Atcheson was behind calls for the recognition of the site.
She said her research indicates there was a debate at the beginning of the 20th century about what to do with the grounds once it was no longer used for burials, but over time it faded out of the public consciousness.
"There weren't very many symbols or very many suggestions that there was anything else here," she said.
"A lot of workhouse burial sites are marked in the Republic and Northern Ireland, and Belfast was a huge workhouse and there’s nothing to mark it, so that really surprised me."
Dr Atcheson wants the people buried there to be remembered as she believes their lives are "a huge part of Belfast's history that hasn't really been dealt with and acknowledged."
She believes there can still be a false perception that the famine did not have a significant impact in the northeast of the country.
"There has been some myth-busting happening in recent years, but definitely when I was in school, the famine was taught as something that happened elsewhere.
"It wasn't part of the narrative of Belfast in the 19th century, so there wasn't a lot of focus put on it for a very long time.
"I would hope that having a kind of visible, tangible reminder of what this place was would go some way to break the silence around the famine years and around the struggles of the everyday person in Belfast."
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Tom Hartley is a former Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, and now a local historian who runs tours of Belfast City Cemetery.
He backed Dr Atcheson’s calls for the burial ground off Donegall Road to be marked in some way, as he thinks unmarked graves mean a lost history.
"Each individual has their own story, their own narrative," he said.
"When you don’t see them, you don’t hear them."
Mr Hartley said it was "very common" to have unmarked graves for poor people in the 19th century.
"In Belfast City Cemetery, there are about a quarter of a million people buried, but 80,000 of those are buried in the poor ground."
"I think it's common practice throughout graveyards, they would open a grave and then fill it up and they'd be filled up with different people. People who couldn't afford a grave, poor people."
Mr Hartley said remains of 18 people buried in the site off Donegall Road were discovered during building work in the 1980s, and the remains were then reinterred in the City Cemetery.
Those remains are now marked, while there is no visible reminder of the thousands still buried near the old workhouse site.
However, Billy Dickson from the local residents' association said there is a "folk memory" of the burial grounds.
"My family home was across the way, so even from a very early age, I was aware there was a graveyard here.
"There were all kinds of stories about the graveyard, my grandmother told me about it, but it was only maybe 20 years ago that I read there were approximately 10,000 people buried here."
Mr Dickson said locals would like to see a plaque on the remaining part of the wall which was the entrance to the graveyard.
"The wording has to be simple to state this is the former entrance to the Union workhouse, where it is estimated that 10,000 people were buried.
"I think we need to have appropriate wording then after that, to remember them. They should be remembered."
The issue has been raised within Belfast City Council and plans to mark the site are in progress.
Alliance councillor for the area Emmett McDonough Brown said there is widespread support among councillors as it is not a politically contentious issue, but a historical issue.
"For us, this is really about remembering the people who contributed to the life of the city.
"We intend to put up a plaque and do some education work and really shine a spotlight on the people who are buried in this site.
"I mean, we see plenty of statues of the great and the good in Belfast, but this is about remembering ordinary people and their stories."
