Graveyard, Kilrush, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Grounds
Beneath the pastureland of Kilrush in County Tipperary lies a graveyard that has effectively vanished from the surface of the earth.
No headstones break the grass, no enclosing wall draws the eye, and anyone walking across the slight natural rise where it sits would have no reason to pause. It is the kind of place that survives mainly as an absence, known to local memory but invisible at ground level.
The site appears on the first edition six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1843, marked as "Kilrush Grave Yd" and outlined as an oval area on a low rise in gently rolling farmland. By the time the next detailed survey was made in 1952 to 1953, it had disappeared from the cartographic record entirely. Physical traces have surfaced only by accident. When farm sheds were constructed near the southern edge of the site around 1986, a length of earlier wall foundation was uncovered during the building work. Separately, wall-footings came to light in the eastern sector during ploughing at some earlier, unrecorded point. Neither discovery was excavated or formally investigated. Local tradition also holds that a church once stood in association with the graveyard, which would not be unusual; early medieval burial grounds in Ireland were frequently attached to small ecclesiastical foundations, sometimes no more than a simple oratory, which left equally faint traces in the landscape.




