Graveyard, Castleland, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
The shape of a graveyard rarely invites comment, but this one within the demesne of Buttevant Castle in north Cork is a notable exception.
Its perimeter forms a distinct bell shape, measuring roughly 110 metres east to west and 60 metres north to south, enclosed by a stone wall with an entrance on the east side. A Church of Ireland church sits just east of centre. The ground is still in occasional use, and the graves here are predominantly those of soldiers, which gives the site an unusual social character compared with the mixed parish burials found elsewhere in the region.
The earliest dateable burial recorded here is a chest tomb of 1772, though the early eighteenth century is well represented in the inscriptions too. These relatively recent markers, however, are not the most remarkable thing buried in the soil. A tapering graveslab, the upper portion of which survives at roughly three feet in length and narrowing from twenty-three inches to eighteen inches wide, was found at the east end of the graveyard just above ground level. It is now kept inside the church for protection. Carved on its face is an eight-armed ringed cross with trefoil terminals, the arms of the cross ending in three-lobed decorative points. Around the cross runs a black letter inscription, the formal Gothic script common to late medieval stonework, though the text is now too worn to read with confidence. Scholars have placed its probable date at 1508, which would make it considerably older than anything else recorded here and a survival from a very different religious and political landscape, predating the Reformation and the whole subsequent history of the site as a Protestant burial ground.