Grave Yard, Glebe, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Grounds
In the quiet village of Kilconnell in County Galway, an irregularly shaped graveyard sits south of the main road, its boundaries running roughly sixty metres north to south and thirty-two metres east to west.
That irregular outline is itself a small puzzle; graveyards that follow the neat geometry of later planned settlements tend to look quite different, and the lopsided footprint here hints at older, more organic origins.
The burials recorded within are from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the site carries traces of a much longer presence. Associated with the graveyard are the remains of a church and a possible standing stone, both suggesting that this patch of ground has held some significance across different periods. Most intriguing, perhaps, is the bullaun stone that was originally found here. A bullaun is a large stone, usually rounded, with one or more cup-shaped hollows worn or carved into its surface; they are found across Ireland in association with early ecclesiastical sites and are sometimes linked to ritual or curative traditions, their water-filled hollows believed in folk memory to have healing properties. The fact that this one was found here, rather than remaining in place, leaves open the question of where it now resides and what its original relationship to the site might have been.