Graveyard, Templevally, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Templevally, Co. Cork

To the south of a road that did not even warrant inclusion on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842, a rectangular graveyard sits enclosed within an earthen bank, its church ruins pushed off-centre to the north-east as though the original planners had second thoughts.

What draws the curious eye, however, is not the church but a low, sod-covered rectangular structure lying to its south, measuring roughly fourteen and a half metres east to west and seven and a half metres north to south, rising no more than forty centimetres at its highest point. A gap runs along the middle of its north side. No one has formally established what it was for.

The graveyard belongs to the old parish of Templevalley, and the church whose ruins occupy its north-eastern corner is the former parish church of that name. The headstones that survive with legible inscriptions date from the late eighteenth century, suggesting the site was still in active use at that period, though it has long since fallen quiet. Burials are confined to the south-western half of the enclosure, while the north-eastern end has been overtaken by heavy overgrowth, swallowing much of whatever detail might once have been readable there. The same vegetation obscures the eastern end of the mysterious low structure to the south of the church, making any confident assessment of its form or function difficult. A building associated with the church, a domestic structure, a feature of earlier agricultural use, the possibilities remain open.

The site sits on ground that, by the mid-nineteenth century, was considered unremarkable enough that the road serving it was left off official maps altogether. That quiet marginality has perhaps contributed to the graveyard's present state, partly absorbed by the landscape, with one of its most intriguing features still waiting for someone to work out what it actually is.

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