Grave Yard, Eyrecourt Demesne, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Eyrecourt Demesne, Co. Galway

Within the grounds of Eyrecourt Demesne in County Galway, a rectangular graveyard sits in a state of quiet disorder.

The graveslabs that survive are mostly broken and no longer in their original positions, shifted over time by ground movement, vegetation, or simple neglect. The interior is extensively overgrown and barely accessible, which lends the place an atmosphere less of deliberate abandonment than of gradual forgetting.

The graveyard measures roughly 50 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west, enclosed by a modern stone wall with entry points at the north and south ends. A church occupies the northern end of the site, and it is around this structure that the surviving graveslabs are concentrated. The earliest recorded date among them is 1722, placing the site's active use well into the eighteenth century, with the majority of the remaining stones dating from the nineteenth century. That span, from the early Georgian period through to the Victorian era, covers generations of local families whose names and particulars are now difficult to read, given the condition of the stones.

Access at the north and south means the site can nominally be entered, though the overgrowth makes moving through the interior a considerable undertaking. Anyone with an interest in early modern funerary stonework would find the slabs worth examining where they remain legible, bearing in mind that most have moved from wherever they were first laid.

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Pete F
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