This compact graveyard is surrounded by an 8ft high wall and lies beside the currently closed Ulster Museum. The city's oldest Christian burial site, it got its name from the central hawthorn tree. The site is said to date back to pre-Christian times, with its gothic arch gate added in 1828. Legend has it St. Patrick built a church on the site, and a couple of stones seem to bear witness to this claim. A grim Cholera Mound contains the bodies of over 400 cholera and 5,000 famine victims.