Grave Yard, Shanganny, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Shanganny, Co. Kilkenny

On the eastern slope of the Nore river valley in County Kilkenny, a small graveyard sits in rolling grassland, its roughly sub-square enclosure measuring about 31 metres on each side.

The walls are relatively straight, though the northern angle curves away unexpectedly, giving the enclosure a slightly organic feel, as if the land itself nudged the boundary into a softer line. Inside, long hummocky grass, the kind that tends to signal disturbed or uneven ground beneath, covers the interior, and two yew trees grow among the mounds. Yew trees are a common presence in old Irish ecclesiastical sites, associated since early medieval times with sacred ground and longevity, and their appearance here reinforces a sense of continuous, quiet occupation.

At the centre of the enclosure, oriented east to west in the traditional Christian manner, are the remains of a medieval church. Writing in 1905, the historian Carrigan recorded two significant finds within the chancel, the eastern liturgical section of the church: a graveslab dating to the 13th or 14th century, and a dispersed wall monument. A graveslab of that period would typically have been a carved stone covering an individual burial, sometimes bearing a cross or foliate ornament, while a wall monument suggests that someone of local consequence was once commemorated here in more formal stone. The fact that these pieces were described as dispersed by the time Carrigan saw them points to a long period of decline and disturbance by the early twentieth century.

The site is entered through a gate at the northern end of the south-west wall, with a stile set just to the north of it. The views from the enclosure extend in all directions across the valley, which perhaps explains why this particular spot was chosen, whether for a church, a burial ground, or both.

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