Quarry, Termon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Mining
Among the scrub and limestone outcrops of Termon in County Clare lie two large stone slabs that were never put to the use for which they were made.
They are headstones, almost certainly hewn from the local rock sometime in the 18th century, but they never marked a grave. They simply remain where they were cut, resting on the ground as though waiting for a commission that never arrived.
For years, the site carried a more dramatic designation. It appeared on official records as a possible burial site, mapped and noted as such through the 1990s. When an inspection was carried out in 1999, the reality turned out to be more prosaic but no less interesting: two unused limestone grave markers lying in rough ground, one measuring just over two metres long and the other slightly smaller, set about three metres apart. Neither appears to cover a burial. The more regular of the two lies to the west, propped on a few loose stones; the other, a little thicker and less uniform, sits to the east. The working assumption is that both were quarried for use elsewhere, perhaps for a nearby churchyard, and were simply never collected or never needed. A third slab, this one bearing an inscription, lies about 60 metres to the south-west, and several other graveslab quarrying sites are scattered within 500 metres of the same spot. The Burren's exceptionally workable limestone made it a natural source for such material, and small-scale quarrying for grave markers was evidently common enough in this part of Clare to leave a visible trace across the landscape.
What you find here is not a burial ground but a kind of workshop remnant, a glimpse into the quiet craft economy that once existed around death and commemoration. The slabs are large enough to be recognisable for what they are, shaped and smoothed but unfinished in purpose, left in the rock-scattered scrub where they were made.