Burial ground, Tuogh (Kenry By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Grounds
A small burial ground in County Limerick holds two identities at once.
Officially recorded under the townland of Tuogh in the barony of Kenry, it is known locally simply as Greanagh graveyard, a name that ties it to the river visible from its low hill rather than to any administrative boundary. That gap between the official record and local memory is often where the most interesting places sit.
The site occupies a sub-oval enclosure, roughly 23 metres east to west and 33 metres north to south, surrounded by a mortared stone wall standing about 1.1 metres high. The enclosure's shape, slightly irregular and following the natural rise of the ground, suggests it may have origins considerably older than the wall itself, though the recorded headstones date only to the mid-twentieth century. To the south, a scatter of low, undressed stones may mark earlier graves, their inscriptions, if they ever had any, long since lost to weather or time. The site was surveyed and compiled by Denis Power, with the record uploaded in August 2011, and aerial photographs taken in March 2006 by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland offer a useful overhead view of the enclosure's form within its landscape.
Access today is through a stile to the south-south-west, a relatively recent addition. An earlier iron gate to the north-west survives but is now dilapidated. A trackway that once led south from the road to the graveyard was still visible on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1923, but it has since fallen out of use and is overgrown. Much of the interior, particularly towards the north-east, is now covered in dense vegetation, which makes reading the ground difficult. Visitors should expect to pick their way carefully, and the low stones to the south are worth examining closely, though identifying them with certainty as gravemarkers requires some patience and a good eye for subtle ground disturbance.