Burial ground, Drumgonnelly, Co. Louth
Co. Louth |
Burial Grounds
In a field to the south-west of Drumgonnelly House in County Louth, there is, or was, a graveyard.
The precise word to use is uncertain, because so is almost everything else about this site. Graves were discovered there at some point before the mid-1980s, enough to establish that local tradition had not simply invented the place, but the exact location has never been pinned down with any confidence. It is the kind of site that sits in an awkward gap between folklore and archaeology, acknowledged by both without being fully claimed by either.
The tradition of a burial ground here was already circulating locally when it was first formally noted in the 1986 Archaeological Inventory of County Louth. That a graveyard existed in the vicinity seems to have been common knowledge in the area long before any physical evidence surfaced. The discovery of actual graves confirmed that the tradition had some basis, but also raised more questions than it answered, since no systematic investigation appears to have followed. Without a recorded boundary, a known dedication, or any documentary trail, the site remains difficult to classify, a burial ground in the loosest and most provisional sense.