Graveslab, Burgage More, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Burgage More, Co. Wicklow

A granite graveslab in a Wicklow cemetery carries more history than its weathered surface immediately suggests.

The slab, measuring 1.68 metres tall, 0.55 metres wide, and 0.15 metres thick, bears a cross and shaft carved in low relief, the details softened by age into the stone's surface. It is the kind of object that could easily be passed over, but its presence in its current location is the result of a deliberate act of salvage rather than centuries of undisturbed rest.

Around 1939, the slab was moved from the old graveyard at Burgage to the new cemetery nearby. The reason was practical and irreversible: the Liffey Reservoir Scheme, the large-scale engineering project that would eventually create the Poulaphouca Reservoir, required the flooding of the valley. Communities, roads, and the contents of old graveyards had to be relocated before the waters rose. The slab's original resting place was among the sites cleared in preparation. What had likely stood in that older ground for centuries was lifted and resettled, carrying with it an uncertain record of whoever it once marked.

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