Grave Yard, Blackrath And Athgarvan, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Blackrath And Athgarvan, Co. Kildare

On the southern edge of Athgarvan House's grounds in County Kildare, within a few steps of the River Liffey, lies a graveyard so overgrown that its own boundaries have become difficult to trace. What makes it quietly unusual is not its age or its contents so much as its ambiguity: the ground is estimated to run roughly 60 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, but vegetation and neglect have blurred any clear perimeter, leaving a site that seems to dissolve into the surrounding woodland rather than assert itself as a defined place of burial.

When the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map was produced in 1838, the spot was already recorded as an unenclosed graveyard, meaning it had no surrounding wall or ditch of the kind that would typically mark out a formal burial ground. Tucked inside this overgrown rectangle are the ruins of a church, and legible grave markers from the 18th and 19th centuries still survive among the undergrowth, suggesting the site remained in active use well into the modern period before falling into its current state of heavy neglect.

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Pete F
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