Graveyard, Cahernarry, Co. Limerick

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Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Cahernarry, Co. Limerick

At Cahernarry in County Limerick, two bell-towers stand in close proximity within the same graveyard, one medieval and one post-1700, each representing an entirely different era of Christian worship on the same patch of elevated ground.

The older tower is all that survives of a medieval church, a solitary upright remnant in a landscape otherwise shaped by later hands. Immediately to its north rises the bell-tower of a Church of Ireland building constructed after 1700, the two structures now occupying the northern quadrant of a single large rectangular graveyard, roughly 53 metres along its northwest to southeast axis and 36 metres east to west.

The graveyard itself is enclosed by a post-1700 stone wall, entered through a gate set in the centre of the southeast wall, and its contents speak to the ambitions of local families across the nineteenth century. The north corner holds a large obelisk, a tapered stone monument of Egyptian-derived form that became fashionable in Irish funerary architecture during the 1800s, erected to the memory of the Howley family. A second obelisk in the northwest corner commemorates the Russell family, and the west quadrant contains the Shine family mausoleum, a private burial enclosure of the kind that wealthier Catholic and Protestant families alike commissioned during the same period. The site sits on high ground, with open views across the surrounding countryside, and a large quarry occupies the land immediately to the west, continuing northward to the north-northeast.

The graveyard is still in use, and the entrance gate on the southeast wall provides straightforward access. Once inside, the juxtaposition of the two towers is the first thing worth examining slowly; the medieval stonework and the later structure sit close enough together that the chronological gap between them can feel almost compressed. The nineteenth-century obelisks are substantial, and it is worth walking the full perimeter of the enclosure to locate the Shine mausoleum in the western section. The quarry to the north gives the site an unexpectedly industrial edge when viewed from the higher ground near the bell-towers, a reminder that this corner of Limerick has been worked as well as buried in.

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