Doon Grave Yard, Eyrecourt Demesne, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Doon Grave Yard, Eyrecourt Demesne, Co. Galway

At the edge of Eyrecourt Demesne in County Galway, an L-shaped graveyard continues to receive the dead more than two and a half centuries after its earliest legible headstone was carved.

That stone dates to 1768, but the ground it stands in is almost certainly older. The cemetery occupies most of the interior of what appears to be an ecclesiastical enclosure, a type of defined sacred boundary, often roughly circular or oval, that typically predates the Norman period and signals an early Christian monastic or church site. Whatever community first drew that boundary here left no written record that has survived.

At the rough centre of the graveyard stand the remains of a church, its walls reduced but still present. The enclosure around everything is modern, stone and concrete, with an entrance to the south, and it gives the site a tidy, maintained look that sits somewhat at odds with its layered past. Most of the burials visible today date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the expected accumulation of a parish graveyard still in active use. But scattered among the inscribed headstones are a number of rough, uninscribed grave-markers, plain stones set without name or date, which point to a much older habit of burial and to people whose identities the ground has quietly kept to itself.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Doon Grave Yard, Eyrecourt Demesne, Co. Galway. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement