THE remains of 400 Famine victims who died in a Derry workhouse were yesterday reinterred following an interdenominational service at Ballyoan cemetery in the Waterside area of the city.
It took three weeks to exhume the remains found by workmen excavating a site in the grounds of the former workhouse.
Several dozen people attended the burial service, among them 99 year old Mrs Janet Boyle, who said she clearly remembered being told about the horrors of the Famine by her grandparents.
"My grandmother in particular spoke to me a lot about the Famine. She told me about seeing the bodies of many people, including babies, lying on the roads and in the fields.
"I just had to come here to pay my own respects to the sad people. The circumstances in which they died were horrific. It was a very nice and very moving ceremony. It is a very sad day but it is also good that people remember the dead and remember them with dignity and reinter them after such a lovely ceremony," she said.
The remains of the 400 victims were placed in 24 lettered and numbered coffins. After the service, which was jointly conducted by the Rev Kenneth Best, President of the Methodist Church, Father Charles Canny, who represented the Catholic Church, the Rev Maynard Cathcart of the Presbyterian Church, and Canon Leslie MacConachie of the Church of Ireland, the coffins were lowered into 11 graves. Mr Best said the ceremony was a very important act of Christian unity.
"It is only right that these remains are today reburied with the greatest dignity. This will be the final resting place of the remains of those who, during their time in the workhouse, did not know many of the privileges that we today take for granted," he said.
A local historian, Mr Patsy Durnin, who wrote a book on the Waterside Workhouse, said it was planned to erect a memorial alongside the graves.
"I feel extremely contented and I feel very pleased now that these poor people have been buried properly. I have a close affinity with them, having studied the history of the workhouse for six years. It is as if I am at a funeral of relatives," he said.
Wreaths were laid on behalf of Derry City Council, local history societies, and one wreath was signed "On behalf of the common people of the North West".