Grave Yard, Ballinlena, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Burial Grounds
On a gentle east-facing slope near the tip of Kilcummin Head, roughly seventy metres from a rocky shore above Killala Bay, a single graveyard once served both Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic communities.
That shared use is itself unusual, and it is only one layer of what this small, walled enclosure contains. Within its roughly sub-rectangular boundary, accumulated over many centuries, are the remains of an early medieval church, a saint's grave, a carved cross slab, a sundial, and a cluster of box and table tombs, all within an area not much larger than a tennis court.
The enclosing wall, built of mortared stone and standing around 1.2 metres high, follows straight lines on three sides, but curves gently along the northeast, a subtle irregularity that may reflect an earlier boundary or the natural lay of the ground. The early medieval church in the southwest quadrant is the oldest known structure on the site, placing Christian activity here well over a thousand years ago. A saint's grave and a cross slab, the latter a flat stone incised with a cross, a common early Christian memorial type in Ireland, occupy roughly the centre of the northern half of the enclosure. The oldest legible headstones date to the eighteenth century, though the site's religious history is clearly much older. Approximately fifty metres to the north lie a holy well and the site of an unclassified castle, suggesting that this corner of the Mayo coastline was once a place of some consequence, spiritual and perhaps strategic.