Headstone, Caherabbey, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Religious Objects

Headstone, Caherabbey, Co. Tipperary

A small sandstone slab standing upright in the grounds of Bengurragh House in County Tipperary carries an inscription that is partly legible and partly lost, and a history that is considerably more troubling than its modest dimensions suggest.

The stone, just 46 centimetres above ground and 39 centimetres wide, bears a crudely carved English text in what has been described as a naive style: "Here Li... Bodi Of M[?]... the wife of I. F. deceaced the 2[nd] of No[vem]ber 1675." The upper left corner has broken away, taking with it the full name of the woman and most of her husband's. What remains is the date, the 2nd of November 1675, and the bare fact of a marriage, rendered in uncertain spelling by someone who clearly cared enough to mark the occasion even if the craft was modest.

The stone's presence in a walled garden, rather than a churchyard, is explained by a chain of events that unfolded roughly two centuries after it was first raised. According to local tradition recorded by Sadleir in the early twentieth century, the house at Bengurragh, formerly known as Upper Cahir Abbey, was built by a Quaker named Fennell. One of his ancestors is said to have originally erected the headstone, and a later member of the family retrieved it after Lord Glengall cleared Cottage Hill Cemetery, probably sometime in the early 1800s, in order to extend his parkland. The clearance was not a careful one. The remaining headstones were broken, and the human remains were thrown into the River Suir. The Fennell who salvaged this particular stone and placed it within his own grounds was, by that act, preserving something that might otherwise have ended up in the river along with everything else.

The stone now sits 30 metres west of the house and just south of the walled garden's southern wall, embedded upright in the ground as if it had always been there. The identity of the woman it commemorates remains incomplete, her name worn or broken away after more than three and a half centuries, her husband known only by initials that may or may not correspond to a Fennell ancestor. What the stone does preserve, in its fragmentary way, is evidence of a burial ground that no longer exists, cleared to satisfy a landlord's desire for a larger park.

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