Graveyard, Dromdarrig, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Grounds
A public road cuts directly through this graveyard.
Not along its edge, not past its boundary wall, but through it, slicing the eastern side of the enclosure so that what was once a continuous burial ground is now divided by passing traffic. It is one of those quietly jarring arrangements that accumulates over centuries without anyone quite deciding it should happen, and it gives the site at Dromdarrig, three miles west of Limerick city on the Foynes road, an atmosphere that rewards a slow look rather than a quick one.
The graveyard sits on a low rise of ground and almost certainly occupies the site of an early monastery associated with Neasán of Mungret, a saint whose feast day falls on the 25th of July, according to Pádraig Ó Riain's 2011 work on Irish saints. Mungret, or Mungairit in Irish, was a significant ecclesiastical settlement in the early medieval period, and the layers of religious activity here are still visible in the fabric of the place. The graveyard itself is a long sub-rectangular enclosure, roughly 40 metres north to south and 120 metres east to west, enclosed by a stone wall built after 1700. Within it, the remains of Mungret Abbey church occupy the south-eastern quadrant, while the ruins of a Church of Ireland building, also post-1700, sit in the western quadrant. Just to the north-north-east, approximately 90 metres away, stands a pre-Norman church, and immediately east of the public road that forms the western boundary there is a small separate graveyard with its own pre-Norman church. The site, in other words, holds evidence of Christian activity spanning from before the Norman arrival in Ireland right through to the established Church era.
The entrance gate is at the northern end of the eastern wall. A modern extension to the graveyard has been added on the southern side, so the area in active use as a burial ground blends into older ground without a sharp break. The pre-Norman churches are the details worth seeking out; pre-Norman in this context generally means construction before the twelfth-century arrival of the Normans, pointing to early Irish ecclesiastical building traditions rather than the Romanesque or Gothic styles that followed. The western boundary road, which also intersects the eastern portion of the main enclosure, means the site effectively has to be read in pieces rather than as a whole, but that fragmentation is itself part of what makes Dromdarrig worth the detour.