What is recorded here

Inis Cealtra holds the Saint's graveyard beside St. Caimin's church, where a twelfth-century wall still leans over an east-facing slope. Its round-headed doorway, trapezoidal plan and rows of recumbent slabs mark it as a living burial place rather than a ruined curiosity. The small church tucked into its northwest corner and the modern graves beside the old cross-slabs suggest that people kept returning, naming the dead and making the island home.

Situated on an E-facing slope immediately E of St. Caimin’s church (CL029-009011-) on Inis Cealtra. This is known as the 'Saint's graveyard' and according to de Paor (2013, 44) it was laid out and walled in the twelfth century or just before it. A trapezoidal area (30m N-S at wider end; 25m E-W) defined by a well-built, mortared, roughly coursed wall with occasional large blocks. The wall is highest at W (int. H 1.3m; ext. H 0.8m; T 0.8m) and lowest at E (int. H 0.5m; ext. H 1m; T 0.55m) and is cross-capped with rough slabs along the N side and at the N end of the W side. The E wall acts as a retaining wall as there is a very steep slope on the exterior in an area that may have been an orchard. There is a round-headed entrance feature on the W wall (Wth0.98m; H 1.9m; T 0.7m). According to Macalister (1916-17, 142) the entrance is old but the round-headed top has been repaired with one of the voussoirs having been borrowed from the doorway into the enclosure at St. Brigid’s church (CL029-009006-). The walls were repaired and coped by the Board of Works. A small church, Teampull na bhfear ngonta (CL029-009015-) is in the NW quadrant of the graveyard and there are a large number of recumbent graveslabs and cross-slabs in their original locations. During excavations on the island in the 1970s the growth around these slabs was cut back and the slabs were drawn but not disturbed (de Paor, SMR file). A small number of modern burials are also present. This graveyard and all of the monuments on the island are national monuments in State care. Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 19 October 2015

Medieval Christian graveyard; 12th-century construction. Associated with St. Caimin’s church, it reflects early monastic and ecclesiastical settlement on Inis Cealtra, an important site in Irish Christian history.

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