Graveyard, Castleforbes Demesne, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Castleforbes Demesne, Co. Longford

Within the grounds of Castleforbes Demesne in County Longford, a disused graveyard holds a detail that quietly defies easy explanation.

Set to the south-east of a church, the burial ground contains the usual scatter of 18th and 19th century memorials clustered near the building, but arranged a little apart from those named and dated stones are four rows of five upright markers, twenty in total, each one completely uninscribed. No names, no dates, no dedications of any kind. Whether they mark graves that were never recorded, or serve some other purpose entirely, is not clear from anything that survives alongside them.

The graveyard itself is subrectangular, measuring roughly 53 metres west-north-west to east-south-east and 41 metres north-north-east to south-south-west. Its northern boundary is defined by a low, poorly preserved scarp no more than 30 centimetres in height, while two laneways meeting at the south-west corner form its southern and western edges. The site sits within a demesne landscape, the designed and managed estate grounds that surrounded the Forbes family seat at Castleforbes, and would have served the community associated with that estate during the 18th and 19th centuries. The graveyard is no longer in use.

The twenty uninscribed stones are the thing worth looking for. Neatly arranged in their grid, they have the appearance of a deliberate order rather than a haphazard accumulation, which makes their silence on the question of identity all the more pronounced.

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Pete F
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