Grave Yard, Labbamolaga Middle, Co. Cork

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Burial Grounds

Grave Yard, Labbamolaga Middle, Co. Cork

Outside the north wall of one of the medieval churches here, two rounded stones sit sheltered beneath a cut-stone slab.

These are cursing stones, objects associated in Irish folk tradition with the calling down of misfortune on enemies, and their quiet persistence beside the graves at Labbamolaga Middle says something about the long, layered life of this enclosure. Within the same roughly rectangular walled yard, measuring around 35 metres by 30 metres, stand the remains of two churches, a saint's tomb, and a cross-slab. A second cross-slab and a stone cross have been removed to the OPW depot in Mallow. The graveyard remains in occasional use, and the earliest headstone recorded on inspection dates to 1714, though the site itself is considerably older.

The place takes its name from Molaga, an early Irish saint associated with this part of north Cork, and the enclosure at its centre belongs to a tradition of roughly circular or curvilinear early ecclesiastical sites found across Ireland. An archaeological excavation by R.M. Cleary, published in 2000, revealed that the enclosing wall on the west side is two-phased: an early, well-constructed wall about 0.8 metres wide, set on a plinth foundation of 1.1 metres, was later widened by packing a stone-faced earthen bank against its inner face. Decorative fragments from the medieval church were reused in this inner face. A nineteenth-century observer named Windele noted what he described as a crypt-like passage within the wall, a detail that Cleary's excavation suggests may reflect that later widening rather than any original underground feature. Windele also placed the construction of the enclosing wall at around 1820, though the earlier phase is clearly much older. Excavation outside the south wall found a stone surface running parallel to the wall and apparently contemporary with it. One further object from the site, described in a 1925 paper by P. Power as St Fanchan's candlestick, is a cylindrical sandstone piece about ten inches tall with a cup-shaped upper end; its lower end is broken, and it may have functioned as a cresset lamp, a type of simple oil lamp hollowed to hold a flame. It was taken from the ruins and is now held at the Presentation Convent in Mitchelstown.

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