Graveyard, Kilcounty, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
A quiet laneway leading west to south-west is the only approach to this irregularly-shaped graveyard on a south-east-facing slope in County Cork, where the ruins of Dangandonovan parish church sit slightly off-centre to the western side of the enclosure.
The graveyard itself is roughly ninety metres north to south and seventy metres east to west, enclosed by a stone wall, and the whole arrangement has the slightly lopsided feel of a place that grew organically over centuries rather than according to any deliberate plan.
The headstones gathered to the east and south of the church ruins form a substantial collection spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the earliest recorded inscription dating to 1724. That date places the oldest legible stones in the early Georgian period, when cut-stone grave markers with carved lettering were becoming more common across rural Ireland, gradually replacing the older tradition of uninscribed slabs or simple crosses. The collection was documented by Henchion in 1974, whose work catalogued the inscriptions across a considerable range of pages, suggesting the site holds more recorded detail than many comparable rural graveyards of its period.