Leacht cuimhne, Cill Mhuirbhigh, Co. Galway

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Holy Sites & Wells

Leacht cuimhne, Cill Mhuirbhigh, Co. Galway

On the north side of a road in Kilmurvey, on Inis Mór, a mortared stone pier topped with a cross now stands in the front lawn of a private house.

It looks, at first glance, like a garden feature or a boundary marker that has outlived its original purpose. It is neither. This is a leacht cuimhne, a commemorative monument of a type once erected in the west of Ireland as a roadside memorial to the dead, and it is one of a pair that survive in this townland, both overlooking the bay of Port Mhuirbhigh to the west.

The structure itself is compact but substantial: 1.1 metres long, 0.9 metres wide, and 2.25 metres tall, built from mortared stone and surmounted by a cross. Three inscribed plaques are set into its faces, two on the south-west side and one on the south-east, and together they commemorate three members of the Dirrane family: Michl, Honora, and Danl, with dates running from 1828 to 1833. Five years, three names, one family. The cluster of dates suggests a period of loss rather than a single event, though the plaques do not elaborate. The Dirrane name is well rooted in Inis Mór, and the monument places these three individuals firmly in the landscape they came from, on a road above the harbour, facing the water.

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Pete F
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