Headstone, Tankardstown, Co. Laois
Co. Laois |
Religious Objects
In a walled graveyard on the western bank of the River Barrow, two seventeenth-century memorial stones sit close together in the eastern portion of the enclosure, marking graves that predate the formation of most Irish counties as they are known today.
One belongs to a Samuel Cooper; the other, immediately to its north, commemorates a Mathew Cain. The inscription on Cain's stone records that he died in 1674, which makes it among the earlier dateable headstones surviving in the county of Laois.
The graveyard itself is rectangular, enclosed by a stone wall, and sits within undulating countryside on the Barrow's western bank. At its centre stand the ruins of Tankardstown Church, a structure whose precise origins are not fully documented here but which clearly predates the seventeenth-century stones around it. It was common practice in Ireland for burial grounds to cluster around ruined or disused church sites well beyond the point at which the buildings themselves fell out of use, communities continuing to inter their dead in ground they regarded as consecrated. The pairing of Cooper and Cain monuments in the eastern quadrant suggests this corner of the graveyard was considered a place of some significance, though whether that reflects social standing, family connection, or simple proximity is not recorded.
