Tomb, Tallaght, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Tombs & Memorials
Among the more quietly frustrating entries in the archaeological record of Dublin is a tomb that nobody can quite put their finger on.
In the old churchyard at Tallaght, a cluster of seventeenth-century funerary monuments survives, each with its own catalogue reference and, in most cases, a knowable location. The Evarard family tombstone is the exception. Dated to 1673, it has been recorded, referenced, and cross-listed, yet its precise position within the churchyard remains unknown.
The principal source for its existence is Eugene O'Curry, the nineteenth-century Irish scholar whose surveys of ecclesiastical and archaeological sites across the country remain valuable working documents to this day. Writing in 1837, O'Curry noted that the Evarard stone stood close to the Talbot tomb, itself one of the more prominent monuments in the same churchyard. That proximity, though recorded, has not been enough to pin the stone down with any certainty in the time since. Whether it has been moved, buried beneath later ground disturbance, or simply become too worn to identify without more detailed examination, the record does not say. The note was compiled more recently by Geraldine Stout as part of the broader cataloguing effort that informs the national Sites and Monuments Record.
Visitors to the churchyard at Tallaght, which sits in what is now a densely developed part of south-west Dublin, will find the site modest in scale but layered in accumulated history. The Talbot tomb, referenced as a nearby marker in O'Curry's note, may offer a rough orientation point for anyone curious enough to look. Older headstones in Irish churchyards are often badly weathered, and inscriptions from the seventeenth century can be nearly impossible to read without low-raking light, ideally in the early morning or late afternoon on a clear day. The Evarard stone, if it survives above ground at all, is unlikely to announce itself.