Graveyard, Ballyvoddy, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
At the north-western edge of the small County Cork settlement of Rockmills, a rectangular walled graveyard sits quietly beside the road.
What gives it an extra layer of interest is the layering of time visible within a relatively modest space: low, uninscribed grave markers share the ground with legible headstones, and the whole enclosure occupies the site of a much earlier parish church dedicated to St Nathlash, a saint whose name points back to early medieval Irish Christianity.
The graveyard measures roughly 35 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and around 50 metres on the north-west to south-east, enclosed on most sides by a stone wall that sits atop a retaining wall along the road-facing north-eastern edge. The majority of the readable headstones date from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the uninscribed markers scattered among them may well be considerably older, their anonymity a reminder of how much of the burial record simply goes unwritten. The Church of Ireland church that stands to the north, with its tower and steeple still visible, belongs to a later phase of the site's religious life, built on ground that had already been sacred for centuries under the patronage of St Nathlash. The graveyard remains in occasional use today, meaning it is a place where the very old and the relatively recent continue to exist side by side without ceremony.