Burial, Tully More, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Sites
On the eastern bank of a small stream in Tully More, County Galway, there is a burial site that exists now only on paper.
The ground shows nothing: no mound, no stone, no depression in the soil that might prompt a second glance. Whatever once marked this place has been erased entirely, and the only evidence that something was ever here at all comes from the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which recorded four small rectangles arranged in an east-west alignment along the stream bank.
That east-west orientation is quietly significant. Christian burials in Ireland were traditionally laid out on an east-west axis, with the body facing east towards the rising sun and, theologically, towards the direction of resurrection. The four rectangular outlines on the early OS map suggest a modest burial ground, perhaps associated with a nearby settlement or parish that has itself largely vanished from the landscape. The stream beside which the burials lay also functioned as a townland boundary, the kind of marginal, liminal ground where small and informal graveyards were sometimes established in rural Ireland, particularly in periods when access to consecrated church burial was difficult or expensive. The first edition of the six-inch OS map for this part of Connacht was surveyed in the 1830s, meaning the features were present and legible in the landscape at that time, even if they were already modest enough to require careful notation rather than confident surveying.
