Burial Ground, Cloghanower, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Burial Ground, Cloghanower, Co. Galway

At Cloghanower in County Galway, a subtriangular burial ground sits just south of the road, its shape alone setting it apart from the more regular enclosures found across the Irish countryside.

The perimeter wall, built from mortared uncut limestone blocks and finished with coping stones, has been holding its ground long enough that the site now contains layers from several centuries of use, all visible at once if you know where to look.

The ruins of a medieval church occupy roughly the centre of the enclosure, the kind of arrangement that speaks to a site with deep roots, where the dead were gathered around a place of worship long before the present wall took its current form. Graveslabs and table tombs inside the ground date from the 18th century, with 19th- and 20th-century markers alongside them, as well as a number of uninscribed stones whose occupants have no name attached. The oldest recorded slab, however, is no longer lying among the others. Dating to the 17th century, it has been set into the external face of the graveyard wall to the west of the original gateway, facing outward onto the world rather than inward toward the church. A second slab is built into the wall to the south of that same gateway, but whatever inscription it once carried has worn beyond reading.

The original entrance is at the north-northwest, and a more recent gateway has been added at the east-southeast, with a stile just to its north. The 17th-century slab in the outer wall is worth pausing at on the way in, easy to miss if you enter by the newer gate and head straight for the church ruin at the centre.

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Pete F
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