Grave Yard, Killimor And Boleybeg, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Killimor And Boleybeg, Co. Galway

Out in the pastureland west of Killimor village, a roughly rectangular graveyard sits enclosed by a rendered stone wall, its concrete capping an oddly practical note against the older fabric beneath.

What makes the place quietly unusual is the layering of time within its boundaries: the northern half of the enclosure is taken up by the ruins of a medieval church, while the burials surrounding it belong almost entirely to a much later period, running from the late eighteenth century into the twentieth.

The single exception to that later chronology is one medieval graveslab, found inside the church itself. A graveslab of this kind, typically a flat or slightly tapered stone marker bearing carved decoration or an inscription, is a common enough survival in Irish medieval ecclesiastical sites, but here it stands as the solitary physical link between the church's active life and the long quiet that followed. The church ruins occupy only the northern portion of a site measuring roughly fifty-five metres east to west and forty-five metres north to south, with access through a gateway at the north-east corner. The congregation that eventually returned to bury their dead here, presumably drawing on older associations with the site, did so from the late 1700s onward, overlaying a medieval foundation with generations of more recent interments.

The graveyard lies about 700 metres to the west-north-west of Killimor village, set back from the road in farmland. Visitors approaching through the gateway at the north-east will find the church remains directly ahead, occupying the upper half of the enclosure, with the later grave markers filling the ground around and beyond them.

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Pete F
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