Graveyard, Clonkeen, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Clonkeen, Co. Limerick

There is something quietly odd about the layout of this graveyard on the edge of flat Limerick pasture.

The ruins of Clonkeen Church sit close against the northern boundary wall, leaving almost no space between the two, while all of the memorials, every headstone and tomb, are arranged to the south and west of the building. The ground to the north and east of the church is entirely clear of markers, as though the community quietly agreed, over generations, to keep that side of the ruin undisturbed. The site also sits precisely on the townland boundary between Clonkeen and Maddyboy, with the graveyard's eastern wall serving as the physical line between the two.

The site appears on the 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which shows the church forming the northern boundary of the graveyard, with glebe land, that is, land set aside for the income of the local church, immediately to the north between the building and the Murroe road. By the time of the 1923 OS map, the church is already recorded as a ruin, set roughly four metres south of the northern boundary wall within a sub-rectangular enclosure measuring approximately thirty metres east to west and forty-five metres north to south. The graveyard is still enclosed by a mortared stone wall and hedgerow, both post-dating 1700, and the site continues to be used for burial to this day. Among the memorials is a single box tomb belonging to the O'Malley family, dated 1932, positioned in the eastern quadrant, and the graves themselves are oriented east-south-east to west-north-west, following the alignment of the church.

The graveyard is entered through a gateway on the southern side, directly off the R506 Murroe road. A post-1700 cottage sits immediately to the west, and a modern bungalow to the east, so the site is easy to locate even without signage. The boundary wall comes very close to the church on its northern and eastern sides, which makes those angles of the ruin awkward to examine. The southern and western approaches, where the memorials are concentrated, give a clearer sense of the enclosure's scale and of how actively the space is still being used.

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Pete F
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