Graveyard, Glenlary, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Grounds
At the centre of a walled graveyard in the quiet townland of Glenlary, County Limerick, the remains of a medieval church site occupy ground that has been in religious use for centuries longer than the enclosure around it.
The church, recorded under the name Templenalawe, sits at the geometric heart of the burial ground, an arrangement that speaks to the way early Irish ecclesiastical sites were often preserved, built around rather than built over, as later generations added walls and gates while leaving the older fabric largely undisturbed.
Templenalawe carries a name rooted in the Irish language, and the site itself is classified as a medieval church site under the record reference LI049-096002-. The graveyard that surrounds it is roughly rectangular, measuring approximately 44 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, and its enclosing stone wall is a post-1700 construction, meaning it post-dates the Reformation by a considerable margin. An entrance gate sits in the southern wall. Beyond those recorded details, the documentary record is sparse, which is itself fairly typical of rural Limerick ecclesiastical sites that survived not through prominence but through continued local use as burial ground.
The site lies in Glenlary in County Limerick, and like many such rural graveyards in Ireland it will not announce itself dramatically from the road. The southern entrance gate is the logical approach, and once inside, the proportions of the enclosure become clear; it is a modest but coherent space, with the medieval church remains at its centre rather than pushed to a corner or edge. Visitors with an interest in early church archaeology will want to examine whatever survives of the Templenalawe structure itself, though the notes compiled by Caimin O'Brien and uploaded in July 2019 do not detail the condition of those remains beyond their classification. As with many working graveyards built around ancient foundations, the layers of use across many centuries are part of what makes the place worth pausing over.