Graveyard, Gubalaun, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Gubalaun, Co. Leitrim

A small graveyard on the south shore of Lough Melvin holds something that does not quite fit a Christian burial ground: a stone bearing two cup-marks, shallow circular depressions pecked into rock that belong, in most Irish contexts, to the prehistoric period rather than to any ecclesiastical tradition.

That such a stone sits alongside two cross-slabs within a single rectangular enclosure, roughly fifty metres north to south and up to twenty-five metres east to west, suggests the site accumulated meaning across a very long stretch of time.

The graveyard sits on flat, low-lying ground about 140 metres from the southern shore of Lough Melvin, on the west side of an entrance lane, with the ruined church occupying the northern end of the enclosure. Cross-slabs, upright stones carved with a simple incised or relief cross, are a well-known feature of early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites and often predate the more elaborate grave-markers of later centuries. The cup-marked stone is harder to date with confidence; cup-marks are among the most ancient forms of rock art found in Ireland, typically associated with the Bronze Age, and their presence on a later religious site may indicate reuse of an older object or the incorporation of a stone that was already considered significant. A new graveyard was opened east of the lane sometime before 2005, extending the site into active use. Archaeological testing carried out in 2018 and 2019 south of the new graveyard and east of the church found little of note: disturbed deposits of redeposited clays, silts, and sand mixed with modern plastics over a subsoil of grey sand and gravel, the ground having been substantially altered before any formal investigation could take place.

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