What is recorded here

Iindicated is a sub-square graveyard in County Louth holding two ruined churches, a medieval sundial and grave-slabs marked with crosses. One slab, sometimes called the Ruarcan slab, bears a double-lined inscription beside its cross, while another keeps only a faint trace of one. The site has witnessed burial, prayer and the slow burial of memory itself, its stones still catching light and shadow the way they did when people first walked among them.

A sub-square shaped graveyard (max. map dims 71m N-S; 61m E-W) with the remains of two churches (LH021-062003-; LH021-062004-) in the north and centre. The graveyard contains a medieval sundial and two grave-slabs, one (sometimes referred to as the Ruarcan slab) with a double-lined incised inscription and cross, the other with part of a poorly incised cross. The grave-slabs are situated close to the N and S walls of the N church. A third slab was recovered from the graveyard in 1989 and has not previously been recorded. It is an almost rectangular piece of greywacke (max. L 0.6m; Wth 0.18m, T 0.09m) and has a similar simple deeply incised cross on each face. Among the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century headstones in the graveyard there are some very fine examples of folk art as well as two headstones with inscriptions partly in Irish. Isaac Butler recorded a holy well (LH021-062022-) dedicated to a Saint Kiarnan outside the graveyard at SW in 1744, which explains why this angle is excluded from the graveyard itself (Deane 1922, 106). The above description is derived from the 'Archaeological Survey of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of amended upload: 11 May 2016

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