Grave Yard, Kiltullagh, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Kiltullagh, Co. Galway

Among the ordinary headstones of a rural Galway graveyard, four medieval graveslabs lie in quiet contrast to everything around them.

The burial ground outside Kiltullagh village is, on the surface, a fairly typical Irish country enclosure: a roughly rectangular space, around 90 metres by 86 metres, bounded by a modern stone wall and entered through a southern gateway. The majority of its markers date from the 18th to the 20th centuries. But those four earlier slabs, flat and worn, belong to a different world entirely, one that predates the headstone tradition in Ireland by several centuries.

Their presence makes more sense when you notice what occupies the southern end of the graveyard: the remains of a medieval church. Graveyards of this kind, established around early ecclesiastical sites, often continued in use long after the church itself fell into ruin, accumulating later burials around a much older core. A stone font, probably salvaged from the church itself, has also survived and sits within the south-western sector of the enclosure. Baptismal fonts of this type were functional objects at the centre of parish life, used for the administration of baptism, and it is not unusual to find them preserved in or near the ruins of the church they once served when the building itself could no longer be maintained.

The site sits in gently undulating grassland to the north-east of Kiltullagh village, and the medieval graveslabs are visible from within the enclosure. The font is worth seeking out in the south-western corner, close to the church remains.

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