Grave Yard, Cloonard, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Burial Grounds
On a south-facing ridge in County Roscommon, a modest walled graveyard occupies ground that carries considerably older associations than its nineteenth and twentieth-century headstones might suggest.
The site sits at the footprint of an earlier church, and the combination of recent burial use with the remnants of what preceded it gives the place a layered quality that a casual glance would not immediately reveal. Two stone crosses stand among the graves: a plain Latin cross and an unusually formed T-shaped cross, sometimes called a tau cross, a shape with early Christian and pre-Christian resonances that turns up occasionally in Irish ecclesiastical sites.
The graveyard's deeper significance lies in its traditional association with the Mac Dermot Gall, a branch of the Mac Dermot dynasty that was prominent in this part of Connacht during the medieval period. The distinction between Mac Dermot Gall and the main Mac Dermot line reflected the complex internal divisions of Gaelic Irish lordships, where separate branches could develop distinct identities, territories, and burial customs over generations. According to local tradition, this site served as the burial ground for that particular branch of the family. The rectangular enclosure, measuring roughly 32 metres east to west and 28 metres north to south and bounded by masonry walls, sits towards the crest of a ridge running broadly west-northwest to east-southeast, a position that would have made it a visible and deliberate landmark in the surrounding landscape.
