Burial ground, Templemary, Co. Cork

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Templemary, Co. Cork

In a pasture field in north Cork, a series of low, barely perceptible undulations in the ground are all that remains visible of what local tradition identifies as the site of Kilmichael burial ground and church.

There is no standing masonry, no marked grave slabs, no obvious enclosure wall. The land simply rises and dips in ways that do not quite match the surrounding slope, and that quiet irregularity is the only outward sign of what lies beneath.

The site sits on a gentle south-facing slope in the south-east corner of a field, within the demesne of Templemary House. Demesne land, in the Irish context, refers to the private estate grounds attached to a country house, and the enclosure of such land from the post-medieval period onwards frequently swallowed up older features, sometimes preserving them by accident. The local association with a church dedicated to, or named for, Saint Michael is preserved in the placename Kilmichael, the prefix "kil" deriving from the Irish "cill", meaning a small church or monastic cell. Whether any physical trace of that early ecclesiastical structure survives underground, alongside the burial ground it presumably served, remains unconfirmed. What the site offers is less a monument than a question mark pressed gently into a hillside field.

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Pete F
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