Grave Yard, Corrogemore, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Corrogemore, Co. Tipperary

Beneath the machinery of an active gravel quarry in County Tipperary lies a graveyard that had already, by the mid-nineteenth century, forgotten how to look like one.

The site at Corrogemore is not merely overgrown or neglected in the usual way; it has been physically consumed, first by time and then by industry, to the point where no trace of it survives above ground today.

The place had a long head start on disappearing. When Ordnance Survey investigators passed through around 1840 and recorded their observations in what became known as the OS Letters, they noted that there were no burials visible and no graves to be seen, though the outline of the enclosure, defined by a ditch and covered in grass, was still legible in the landscape. The church associated with it, referred to as Corroge Church, sat roughly at the centre of the enclosed area. On the first edition six-inch OS map of 1840, the whole complex was faithfully recorded: a roughly rectangular enclosure with the church site marked within it. By the time of later mapping the plot measured approximately 60 metres north to south and 50 metres east to west. An aerial photograph taken on 13 July 1966 shows the monument still clearly visible from the air, but photographs from 1974 record the quarry already eating badly into the site. The graveyard was not alone in this landscape; a motte and bailey, the earthwork remains of a Norman fortification consisting of a raised mound and an adjoining enclosed courtyard, sits approximately 100 metres to the south-west, and two further enclosures lie within 180 metres to the west, suggesting this corner of Tipperary was once considerably more populated with structures of significance than its present industrial surface would suggest.

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