What is recorded here

Indicated is a pentagonal graveyard in County Clare where medieval church stones became grave markers, blending forgotten worship into ordinary death. A double-faced wall encloses the place, while buried fragments such as a Romanesque corbel and window jambstone suggest that Kilvoydan Church still speaks through scattered marble and memory. People may have walked past sacred carving for centuries before recognising it, turning the graveyard into a living archive of lost faith.

Situated in the E sector of a large ecclesiastical enclosure (CL017-119001-). This irregular pentagonal shaped graveyard (max. L 64m E-W; max. Wth 50m N-S) is defined by a double-faced masonry wall with a gate at the W. All of the legible grave markers are from c. 1900 onward. In the centre of the graveyard is the site of the medieval ‘Kilvoydan Church’ (CL017-119002-), of which there are no visible surface remains. Macnamara (1900, 29) found many stones from this church scattered in the graveyard and reused as grave-markers, leading him to conclude that the church must have been ‘of much architectural and archaeological interest’. In or before the early 19th century a 15th-century stone sculpture (CL017-119006-) was found in the graveyard (ibid., 29-30). In the 1960s or early 1970s a Romanesque corner corbel (H 0.56m; Wth 0.23m) carved with a man’s head (H 0.2m) was accidentally dug up in the graveyard (Harbison 1972, 5-6; Swinfen 1992, 90). Another architectural fragment (CL017-119005-) in the graveyard was identified as a window jambstone in 1999; it was subsequently moved to beside the cross (CL017-119004-) c. 18m to the E of the graveyard (Large 2011). Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 16-10-2025

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