Grave Yard, Dysert, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Dysert, Co. Kerry

Between the gravel pathway and the concrete base of a modern grave plot at Dysert burial ground in County Kerry, there sits what appears to be a fragment of a saddle quern, a hand-operated grinding stone used in prehistoric and early medieval Ireland to mill grain.

It is an odd thing to find repurposed into a graveyard's infrastructure, wedged between two plots, its concave basin still smooth on its outward-facing side as though the grinding work had only recently stopped. It is the kind of detail that rewards a slow walk.

The graveyard occupies a slight rise above the tidal stretches of the River Feale to the north-east, and it encloses the ruinous remains of an older church, of which only the south, west, and northern walls now survive. Of the three named above-ground tombs in the south-eastern half of the graveyard, the oldest dates to 1793 and holds the remains of the Haragan and Hannan families. Built in the manner typical of late eighteenth-century Kerry craftsmanship, it has rubble-stone walls with tooled quoins, a hipped roof with external render, and a decorative plaque carrying a short commemorative verse. The majority of the graveyard's 39 named headstones and plots belong to the twentieth century, giving the ground an uneven quality, ancient fragments sitting quietly alongside relatively recent burials. A survey carried out in 2011 by Ann Frykler and Robert Hanbidge of Headland Archaeology Ltd. documented all of this in careful detail, including noting that only three named tombs, one named headstone, and two named grave markers cover ground that is otherwise largely anonymous.

The site is reached via a straight laneway off a cul-de-sac, with parking close to the entrance. A single pedestrian gate on the western boundary, flanked by a ruinous stone stile, leads inside. The quern fragment, if you go looking for it, lies between the plots numbered 7 and 44 in the survey, incorporated into the concrete reinforcing at the base of the ground between them, its concave face turned westward.

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Pete F
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