Burial, Correagh, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Burial Sites
In a gently undulating field in Correagh, Co. Westmeath, a group of people were buried beneath boulders, and nobody is entirely sure where.
The site is known only through local memory and a single field report, and the graves themselves have never been formally located.
The details that survive are sparse but curious. According to local information recorded in a 1977 field report, skeletons were discovered to the east or south-east of the area's castle, laid under boulders rather than in any conventional grave cut. The manner of burial, bodies placed beneath or among large stones, is not unusual in early medieval Irish contexts, where such arrangements sometimes marked individuals outside the norms of Christian burial, or simply reflected the practical realities of the landscape. What makes this site particularly elusive is that the work was carried out by Professor S. P. Ó Ríordáin, one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Irish archaeology, responsible for excavations at Lough Gur, Tara, and elsewhere. That a scholar of his standing was involved suggests the find was considered worth serious attention, yet no precise location was ever formally fixed in the record. The burials exist, officially, as a site without a confirmed address.