Children's burial ground

The National Monuments Service's description

Encompassing a natural rise, in the NW part of a modern cemetery. There is a fall of ground to the S.
This burial ground, said to have been used as a children’s burial ground, is depicted on the 1837 OS 6-inch map as an unnamed rectangular enclosure (c. 25-30m N–S; c. 15-20m E–W) outlined by a dashed line. By the time of the 25-inch plan in the early 20th century, it had been subsumed into a larger trapezoidal-shaped area (c. 40m E–W; c. 50m N–S) annotated ‘Grave Yard’, and the 1930 OS 6-inch map records a third phase of expansion to the S to its current elongated sub-rectangular extent (c. 40m E–W; c. 180m N–S). The current cemetery, which is named ‘Lisheen Grave Yard’ on the 1930 map, is enclosed by a mortared stone wall, with a concrete wall on the E side bordered by a road.
The older burial ground, as shown on the 1837 map, is located on elevated ground at the N−NW end of the current cemetery. The ground surface here is rough and uneven, and densely covered with low angular stones, most barely protruding above the surface. Within the general profusion of stones, the occasional outline of what appear to rectangular graves can be discerned, defined simply by low concentrations of stones. There are also a few formal 19th- and early 20th-century inscribed headstones, several of which stand within square grave plots with low surrounds of stone, concrete or wrought-iron.
The exact original outline of this early burial ground is no longer clear; a slight E-W scarp (H 0.4m) might represent remnants of an original enclosing wall on the N side but this is very uncertain, and there is no trace of an original enclosing bank or wall elsewhere.

Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 12 April 2018