Grave Yard, Inchagoill, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Inchagoill, Co. Galway

On the island of Inchagoill in Lough Corrib, a small graveyard sits beside the ruins of St. Patrick's Church, its boundaries drawn by a modern wall enclosing a rectangle just over twenty-six metres east to west and twelve metres north to south.

What makes the ground unusual is the range of what marks the dead here: formal nineteenth-century graveslabs sit alongside very small boulders pressed into the earth, almost casual in appearance, yet almost certainly serving as grave-markers for burials whose names have long since gone unrecorded.

The most significant object in the enclosure is a pillar stone standing to the south-west of the church, known locally as the Stone of Lugna. Pillar stones of this kind, upright slabs or columns set into the ground, were used in early Christian Ireland both as grave-markers and as commemorative monuments, and this particular example carries an inscription considered among the oldest written Christian Latin in Ireland. Two further plain erect pillar stones within the graveyard lack any inscription but are thought to have served a similar marking function. The burials themselves are concentrated to the south of the church and continue eastwards beyond its gable wall, suggesting the graveyard grew organically around the building over a long period rather than being laid out in a single plan.

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