Grave Yard, Toberaheena, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Grounds
The oldest legible headstone in this quiet Tipperary graveyard carries a date of 1724 and is decorated with the Keating arms, making it a rare survival of early eighteenth-century funerary carving in the region.
The graveyard itself is notably sparse, with stones predominantly from the 1700s and 1800s scattered across a roughly square enclosure, giving the site an open, unhurried quality that sets it apart from the more densely packed burial grounds common elsewhere in Ireland.
The graveyard sits on relatively level ground east of St. Stephen's Place and south of Western Road, enclosed by a mortared stone wall and measuring approximately 54 metres north to south and 58 metres east to west. The church associated with the site occupies the northern end of this enclosure. In 2001, limited excavation in the vicinity was carried out, but it yielded nothing of archaeological significance, suggesting that whatever earlier activity may have taken place here left no traceable material record below ground. The Keating arms on that 1724 stone represent the most concrete link to a named family and to a period when elaborate heraldic decoration on grave markers was a marker of social standing in Munster communities.