Grave Yard

Isolated like an island in a drowned valley, the ruined church and graveyard at Derryco, Co. Kerry, still hold thirty-seven marked graves and seven tombs beside the Cashen River. The church walls stand with a later buttress, the yard is bounded by rubblestone and an earthen bank, and the ivy-covered gate piers mark the eastern entrance. Local tradition calls the site an early monastic settlement, though no trace of that origin has been confirmed. What is certain is that the place remains a living burial ground, still receiving the dead into its old, water-shadowed ground.