Graveyard, Banteer, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
In a field near Banteer, a church and its burial ground have all but disappeared into the soil.
There are no headstones to stumble upon, no roofless gable catching the light. The site sits in the middle of agricultural land, and what little once marked it above ground has been levelled so thoroughly that only barely perceptible undulations in the earth hint at anything beneath.
When Bowman recorded the site in 1934, things were marginally more legible. Writing of land then belonging to a J. Morrissey, he noted that about one-third of the surrounding fence still stood, that the enclosed area measured roughly 50 yards by 35, and that grass-covered mounds along the northern edge indicated where the church itself had stood. Two whitethorn trees were growing on the church-site, the kind of detail that carries its own quiet significance: whitethorn, or hawthorn, has long been associated in Irish tradition with sacred and liminal places, and its presence at old ecclesiastical sites is not unusual. By the time the site was mapped in 1938 on the Ordnance Survey six-inch sheets, an arc of bank running roughly south-south-east to north-north-west was still legible enough to be marked with hachures, the small lines draughtsmen use to indicate an earthen feature. That arc measured around 35 metres. Since then, tillage on the gently south-west-facing slope has done the rest, and there is now no visible surface trace.