Graveyard, Fedamore, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Grounds
At the centre of Fedamore, in County Limerick, a disused Church of Ireland building sits at the precise geometric midpoint of a notably square graveyard, roughly 37 metres north to south and 47 metres east to west.
The regularity of that enclosure is unusual enough on its own, but the graveyard has since been extended eastward by a further section of similar proportions, giving the whole site a quietly deliberate, almost planned quality that sets it apart from the more organically shaped burial grounds typical of rural Ireland.
The Church of Ireland building dates to the 18th century, though it was raised on ground that had already been sacred for much longer. Beneath it, or rather before it, stood a medieval church, recorded in the archaeological survey under the reference LI022-100001. The layering of one ecclesiastical building on top of an earlier one was common practice across Ireland, where Christian communities repeatedly consecrated sites that already carried religious significance. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1904 to 1905, documented the monuments visible inside the church at the time of his survey. Among them he noted a memorial to John Croker of Ballinagarde, dated 1717, who died at the age of 93, and a monument to one John Heart, bearing the dates 1741 and 1736. The slight oddity of those two dates on a single stone, with the later year appearing first, suggests either a memorial erected some years after death or a stone that records more than one interment.
Fedamore is a small village in south County Limerick, and the graveyard is centrally located within it, making the site relatively straightforward to find. The church itself is disused and is unlikely to be accessible inside, so the monuments Westropp described may not be easily viewed. The graveyard, however, repays a slow walk around its perimeter, where the geometry of the enclosure becomes apparent, and the extended eastern section can be clearly distinguished from the original square. Those with an interest in early ecclesiastical sites will find the layered history of the ground, medieval church beneath 18th-century building, quietly legible in the fabric of the place.