Grave Yard, Burrow, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Burial Grounds
On the western fringe of the Rosslare sand-spit in County Wexford, there is a graveyard that gives almost nothing away.
No boundary wall marks it out, no visible enclosure signals that this is, or ever was, consecrated ground. To a passer-by on the north-south road that runs alongside it, there is simply nothing to see.
The site is associated with St. Broagh's church, a medieval ecclesiastical foundation, though the church itself has long since vanished from the surface of the land. What remained hidden beneath the ground came to light during archaeological testing, recorded under the reference 06E0099. Excavators working inside a cottage on the site uncovered nine burials, and in the same confined space they identified the southern wall of St. Broagh's church, preserved below floor level. The findings were documented by Ó Drisceoil in 2009. It is a striking inversion of the usual order of things: the building that replaced the church had, unknowingly, been erected directly over it, sealing both the wall and the dead beneath an ordinary domestic floor.