Burial ground, Trienieragh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
On the western side of the Freemount to Milford road in north Cork, a rectangular enclosure sits quietly in the townland of Trienieragh, its earthen banks planted with trees and its interior sloping gently down towards the south-east.
What makes it unusual is partly the gap between what it once was and what survives: the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map names it 'Delliga Church Yard', implying an ecclesiastical association that had already faded enough by 1905 for the revised map to drop 'Church Yard' in favour of the more modest 'Delliga Burial Ground'. No church stands here now, and the ground has long since fallen out of use.
The enclosure measures roughly 45 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and 25 metres across, bounded by an earthen bank whose south-eastern face is stone-fronted externally, with an entrance gate breaking the line. Inside, around seventeen inscribed headstones have been recorded alongside a much larger number of low, uninscribed grave markers, the kind of modest fieldstone slabs that mark countless rural Irish burials where the family could not afford, or did not seek, a cut inscription. The earliest inscribed stone commemorates the Barry family and is dated 1758, giving the burial ground a documented history of at least two and a half centuries, though the association with a church yard suggests activity that may stretch considerably further back. The name 'Delliga' does not obviously correspond to a known saint or foundation, which adds a quiet puzzle to the place.
