Grave Yard, Kiltinan, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Grounds
The steps built into the northern wall of this graveyard in County Tipperary serve both sides at once, allowing passage in and out without disturbing a single stone.
It is a small detail, but it points to a place that has been in continuous, considered use across several centuries, layered with the dead in ways that are not always easy to untangle.
Situated on the crest of a north-south ridge, the graveyard is a roughly rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 42 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west, bounded by a stone wall with a formal entrance of stone piers set towards the southern end of the western wall. The northern boundary is formed, at least in part, by a medieval church, so that the building and the burial ground share a wall and, in a sense, a single history. Inside the enclosure are two medieval grave slabs, flat carved stones of the kind commonly used to mark high-status burials in the later medieval period in Ireland, their inscriptions or decorative work worn by centuries of weather and foot traffic. There is also a record of a 17th-century burial ground within the same space, though its precise location within the enclosure has not been established, which means the ground itself may hold more than it visibly declares.