Grave Yard, Kilronan, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Burial Grounds
A graveyard with no evidence of burial is a quietly disorienting thing. At the western edge of a broad river basin in County Waterford, the site traditionally associated with the parish church of Kilronan amounts to little more than a stretch of overgrown ground and a single surviving wall foundation, 7.5 metres long, which may belong either to the church itself or to the northern perimeter of the graveyard enclosure. The name endures; the physical record, almost entirely, does not.
The site was documented by the Reverend P. Power in 1895, in his survey of the ancient ruined churches of Waterford, published in the Waterford Archaeological Journal. By that point the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map had already recorded the graveyard's approximate outline, roughly 35 metres east to west and 25 metres north to south, giving researchers at least a sense of the enclosure's former scale. Whether the surviving foundation belongs to that boundary wall or to the church that once stood within it remains unresolved. No burials have been identified on the ground, which makes the classification of the site as a graveyard rest almost entirely on cartographic and historical tradition rather than physical evidence.