What is recorded here

Overgrown grass and broken stone mark a small graveyard in Collooney where late medieval church ruins still stand between modern warehouses. Thirteen memorials remain for leading families of Tirerrill, though the oldest tomb dated 1707 has vanished. Bones recovered outside the wall during later building work hint that people buried here long before the church was raised. The place keeps its dead close beneath ordinary ground, waiting for rain or excavation to remind the town they are still present.

A rectangular graveyard (23m E-W; 12m N-S), no longer used and much covered by overgrowth. The ruin of a late medieval church (SL020-203001-), situated at its W end, takes up most of the space between two warehouses. The interior of the church and graveyard have thirteen memorials 'for some of the leading families of Tirerrill' (O'Rorke 1878, 103). The tomb dated 1707, which O'Rorke (ibid.) noted as the oldest, is no longer evident (pers. comm. M. B. Timoney). An archaeological assessment, carried out in the early 1990s, revealed 'a massive degree of ground disturbance' in the area, but three skeletons and a possible fosse were discovered in small trenches to the SE and NE of the graveyard respectively (Simpson 1994). These suggest a possible early medieval date for the site though there is no documentary evidence for such a foundation (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970). Archaeological monitoring of the site in 2000, prior to development, confirmed that human remains were buried outside the graveyard wall to the E (Halpin 2001, 300-301). According to local information, other human remains were uncovered during the course of the site's development (ibid.). The undisturbed ground (dims. 8m x 5m) to the E did not reveal any further human remains while further E the ground was disturbed and it appears likely that the construction of the basement of Abbey House may account for the ditch or boundary uncovered in the 1994 assessment (ibid., 301). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Sligo' compiled by Ursula Egan, Elizabeth Byrne, Mary Sleeman with Sheila Ronan and Connie Murphy (Dublin Stationery Office, 2005). Date of upload: 18 January 2008

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