Grave Yard, Kilconierin, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Kilconierin, Co. Galway

At the south-eastern end of a graveyard in Kilconierin, County Galway, there is a building that has served, at different points in its life, as a church and as a cow byre.

That arc of use, from the sacred to the agricultural, is quietly arresting, and it is the kind of detail that tends to get absorbed into the landscape without much remark.

The graveyard itself is irregularly shaped, running roughly sixty metres east to west and thirty metres north to south, enclosed by a stone-built wall with a gateway at the south-west. Its north-eastern end was once occupied by a medieval church, now gone, whose presence accounts for the site being used as a place of burial at all. The more recent church building, which stands in the south-eastern section, was at some point deconsecrated and put to use as a farm building. No early grave-markers survived inspection; all the visible headstones are modern, which means the long span of the site's history leaves almost no legible trace at ground level. The medieval church is gone, whatever earlier burials may have taken place here are unmarked, and what remains is a working graveyard that gives little away about the centuries behind it.

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Pete F
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