Grave Yard, Tullaghmelan, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Tullaghmelan, Co. Tipperary

What makes the graveyard at Tullaghmelan quietly remarkable is the concentration and age of its surviving stonework.

Set on a gentle natural rise in south Tipperary, the site holds an unusually dense collection of early eighteenth-century graveslabs, many of them still legible, arranged around a church at the rough centre of an irregularly shaped enclosure. The number of slabs alone is notable, but it is their dates that catch the attention: the earliest recorded stone is inscribed 1711, placing it within the first decade of the century, and it sits to the north-east of the church. A loose headstone found inside the east end of the building carries the date 1712, and another near the north doorway is dated 1724. Additional early slabs appear both within the church and clustered outside the east gable, suggesting this end of the building was a particularly favoured spot for commemoration.

The graveyard itself measures roughly sixty metres north to south and forty-nine metres east to west, and its northern boundary is formed by a low, wide earthen bank, three metres across and just over half a metre in height on the interior side. This bank also serves as the edge of a small wooded area immediately to the north, so the graveyard and the woodland share a boundary that is both functional and atmospheric in an understated way. Three architectural fragments have also been recorded within the enclosure, suggesting that earlier or more elaborate building work once stood here, though the specifics of those fragments remain unattributed in surviving accounts. Access to the site is through an iron gate and stile on the southern side, where a road runs directly adjacent to the boundary.

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