What is recorded here

Grave Yard in County Mayo, Ireland, occupies low ground beside the Owenmore River, where dense vegetation now swallows most markers and the land rises toward a medieval parish church. The place has grown from a small square plot into a larger trapezoidal enclosure, yet the river, bog and old church still define its shape. It is the kind of graveyard where memory becomes tangled with grass, as if the dead are not being forgotten but absorbed into the landscape.

Located in lowlying ground on the N bank of the Owenmore River, close to a bend in the river. There are expanses of bog to N and S. This graveyard is depicted on the 1838 OS 6-inch map as a square area (c. 25m E−W; c. 25m N−S), with the church (MA026-003001-) abutting the W boundary, located c. 50m E of the river bank. By the time of the 1921 edition the graveyard had been expanded to its current roughly trapezoidal extent (c. 60m NNE−SSW; c. 45m WNW−ESE at E end, c. 70m at W end), with the W boundary coinciding with the riverbank. The graveyard is enclosed by a mortared stone wall, with a wrought-iron gate at the NE corner. In the interior ground level rises markedly from the perimeter towards the centre. Several early 20th-century headstones of Celtic type area visible, but many the majority of gravemarkers are engulfed in dense vegetation. There graveyard encloses a medieval parish church (MA026-003001-) and a bullaun stone (MA026-003004-). Attached image: MA026-003002-_01.JPG: viewed from N Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 12 December 2017

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