What is recorded here

Grave Yard holds the buried parish of Castlerickard on a Meath bluff, where earthen banks and stone walls still guard a rectangular plot above the Blackwater valley. Headstones mark ordinary deaths from 1716 to about 1900, but the undated Swifte mausoleum rises like a forgotten instrument, its limestone edges locked into a four-sided flame. People may have chosen that shape because it pointed downward as much as upward, giving the dead a room with no roof and no floor.

Situated on a bluff overlooking the valley of the S-N Blackwater River, with the stream c. 60m to the W. The site of the medieval parish church of Castlerickard (ME031-014001-) is within a rectangular graveyard (dims c. 40m WNW-ESE; c. 30m NNE-SSW) defined by earthen banks at N and E and by masonry walls at S and W, which retain the slope. The headstones date from 1716 to c. 1900, but the extraordinary Swifte mausoleum in the form of a tetrahedron (H 4.45m) of interlocking limestone pieces has no date. The motte (ME041-014----) is c. 15m to the N and the field system (ME041-015----) is around both features to the N and E. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 20 March, 2015

A medieval graveyard; associated with the parish church of Castlerickard.

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