Grave Yard, Graigue, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Graigue, Co. Tipperary

Scattered across the ground of this graveyard in County Tipperary are fragments of dressed stone that were once doorways and window surrounds of a medieval church.

Lifted from the ruins of Pallas Church, which still forms the northern boundary of the site, these architectural pieces have been set flat into the earth, repurposed, it seems, as grave-markers. It is an unusual arrangement, the fabric of a building becoming part of the burial ground it once served, and it gives the whole place a quietly layered quality.

The graveyard sits on a natural rise overlooking the Pallas River to the west, within an ecclesiastical enclosure that has accumulated centuries of use. The medieval church ruins at its heart represent the older stratum, with box tombs and memorials crowded inside the roofless walls. A 19th-century Church of Ireland building occupies the south-west quadrant of the same enclosure, introducing a more recent denominational presence into what is clearly a much older sacred landscape. The surrounding wall and entrance gate date from after 1700, and the burial ground was formally enclosed in 1709 by Christopher Anistell of Sraduff House, a property roughly 1.4 kilometres to the south-east. The Anistell family also had a private walled burial area constructed against the east gable of the church, a common practice among landed families of the period who wished to maintain a physical boundary between their own dead and the wider community. A larger burial area to the east of the Church of Ireland building holds memorials from the post-1700 period, while a smaller section lies to the west of the medieval ruins. Within easy reach of the site, and worth noting for the density of early Christian association in this part of Tipperary, are Toberdima holy well and St. Dima's Stone to the east, and the remains of Pallas Castle to the south-west.

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