Kilcasheen Graveyard
8:00 p.m. Thursday 1 December 2022 (updated 11 Jun 2024; 15 Jan
2025; 27 Jan 2025; 29 Jan 2025)
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Introduction
- Cairde Chill Caisín (Friends of Kilcasheen, est. c2001) was
established to acquire, fence in and preserve the ancient burial
ground in Kilcasheen townland, to provide car parking and
pedestrian access from the main Kilkee-Carrigaholt road (R487),
and to erect a memorial to all those buried in unmarked plots
there.
- Kilcasheen Graveyard was used for centuries as a cillín or
ceallurach, and occasionally as a graveyard for older children
and adults, by people in the surrounding townlands (Furroor
Upper and Lower, Moveen East and West, Lisheencrony and
Lisheenfurroor).
- Nuacht TG4, 7 Feabhra
2018
Location of Cill Caisín
- logainm.ie
- originally considered part of the parish of Kilfearagh
- now part of the parish of Moyarta
- Griffith's
Valuation map (1855, graveyard in no. 3, then occupied
by Thomas Kane, subletting from Michael O'Donnell,
caretaker/middleman for John Westropp )
- Historic 6inch map
(1840, predates original 1852 "Moveen" school; post-1855 farm
boundaries, most of the townland of 189a 0r 1p occupied by
Michael O'Donnell)
- Historic 25inch map
(c1900)
- Four households in Kilcasheen townland in the 1901 census,
headed by:
- Patrick Tubridy
(1866-1950), with some of his siblings, who had recently come
from Moyasta to take over some or all of O'Donnell's farm in
Kilcasheen under a convoluted lease;
- Cornelius
Hickey (1827-1910), retired teacher, in the old
schoolhouse, which became the original teacher's residence;
- Thomas Collins
(c1850-1910), farmer; and
- Thomas Downes
(c1847-1923), N.T.
- Patrick Tubridy married Margaret Quealy on 12 February 1907
and they had five children.
- As the Tubridy family aged, the Land Commission became
involved and the Patrick Tubridy estate was the subject of this
exchange in the Dáil on 17 May 1977:
Francis Taylor asked the Minister for Agriculture
when the Land Commission will take possession of and divide
the Patrick Tubridy estate, Kilcasheen, Moveen, County Clare.
Michael Pat Murphy: The property referred to has already
vested in the Land Commission but efforts to obtain possession
of the lands have not been successful. I understand that steps
are now being taken to obtain a court order for possession
under section 19, Land Act, 1927. At this stage, therefore, it
is not possible to state when the lands will be divided.
Mr. Taylor: In view of the number of farmers concerned I would
urge the Parliamentary Secretary to do everything possible to
expedite this division. The farmers have been waiting for a
long time.
Mr. M.P. Murphy: I assure the Deputy that that is the
intention. The land was acquired in 1970 and the Land
Commission feel it is time to finalise the matter.
- The five Tubridy children appear to have all died unmarried,
and probably intestate, in 1974, 1978, 1982, 1984 and 1989.
- Title to the land and graveyard was in abeyance for many
years.
- Cairde Chill Caisín are grateful for the co-operation of the
new registered owner of the graveyard.
- Access for burials was via the Tubridy farmyard, or across the
fields.
- present-day map
- Folio CE22326.
- Archaeological
Impact Assessment Report completed by the late Marcus Ó
hEochaidh (c.1930-2020), archaeologist and former
Assistant Inspector of National Monuments, on 21 Aug 2014,
making the following points:
- OS maps depict the graveyard as being unenclosed (broken
lines), indicating that it had gone out of use when enclosure
of graveyards was being contemplated in the nineteenth
century.
- Five table graves were found in the graveyard, all without
inscription or date.
- There is evidence for the existence of a former earthwork
enclosure with associated features.
- During the 1950s, the site was inspected by the late
Archaeological Officer Henry Aimers Wheeler (1916-1993) during
works in an adjoining field to the west.
- Kilcasheen graveyard had its beginning around a church
located within a circular ringfort-like enclosure, bringing to
mind Westropp's statement that `there was a church for every
10 forts in the [Dalcassian] district'.
- The site is especially suitable for future archaeological
investigation and great care should be taken that it remains
so.
- Consideration should be given to having the land vested in
the State under the National Monuments Acts.
- Planning permissions for the proposed new access was
originally in the name of the late Fr Pat Culligan (1933-2020)
and is now in the name of Fr Michael Casey (P14/284 - granted
18 Sep 2014; P19/781 - extended
to 18 Oct 2024; and P21/1387 - granted
4 Apr 2022, still expires 18 Oct 2024; see photograph
of part of drawing):
to provide off road car parking, new pedestrian
entrance and fencing to site boundaries with all associated
site works
- Did the burial ground cross the townland boundary into what in
1855 was Andrew M'Mahon's land (more recently McInerneys' land)?
- Martin Moloney said that his
father used tell the yarn about when he [Thady
Moloney (1875-1944)] was a young man, the ditch dividing the
townlands of Kilcasheen and Moveen East was broken down and a
gang of locals (including Thady) got together to build it up.
He told how they were firing up shovel-fulls of human bones,
skulls, etc., into the new ditch.
Placename origins
- Church of Cassidanus?
- See The Story of Inis
Cathaigh (Scattery Island) by Daniel Mescal
(Dublin: O'Donoghue & Co., 1902, p. 21):
ST. SENAN then placed himself under Cassidanus, or
Cassidus, a holy man who was a native of Kerricurrihy, between
Cork harbour and Kinsale, but who appears to have resided then
in Irros, before referred to, in the western part of Corca-Bhaiscin.
- Padraig de Barra (typescript):
... standing in the ground are strong stones, in
line, and too close together to be grave markers. On
close examination we notice that they are the outline of the
foundations of an old building, lying east-west ... what
really are of interest are the strong stones standing in
line. One can't but imagine that here, some time in the
past, was a church or oratory. The northern and eastern
walls were two feet thick, the southern wall more than that,
but difficult to ascertain because of elder bushes and briars
growing up through it. It is difficult to determine anything
about a western wall because of a strong, large-stone-bearing
ditch of comparatively recent construction. The width of
the structure, internally, would have been 14' 3"
(4.34m). A foundation measuring 35' 9" (10.89m) in
length is discernible on the northern side ...
- Not on Clare County Council's Record of Protected
Structures.
- Shown on map as Recorded
Monuments "CL065-026001- : Graveyard" and "CL065-026002- :
Church"
Description: Within Kilcasheen graveyard (CL065-026----).
Westropp (1912, 103) lists ‘Kilcashin’ as having a church and
graveyard and later (ibid., 105) notes that ‘Kilcashen, a part
of MacMahon’s estates was granted to G. Earl of Kildare in a
patent of May, 1601, but the building is not named’. Large
(2010) noted and photographed the remains of a rectangular
structure. The low remains of a rectangular structure lying
within an undelimited graveyard may be the remains of the
church. A length of wall foundation at NW (L 5.6m; Wth 0.8m;
max. H 0.5m) is double faced while at NE is a single wall of
stones (L also 5.6m) set on edge (largest: H 0.5m; Wth 0.8m; T
0.25m). One set stone (H 0.25m) may be part of the SE wall.
Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 7 December 2022
ITM Coordinates: 486073 , 656170
Latitude and Longitude: 52.644759 , -9.683512
- Or could the name derive from Caisin, son of Cas, who appears
on the pedigree of the Dál
gCais or Dalcassian clans, ironically as ancestor of the
Tubridys?
Burials
- In 1839, Eoghan Ó Comhraidhe from Doonaha wrote of Kilcasheen:
There is another burying ground called Killcasheen
in the Townland of Killcasheen in this Parish. This was a
deserted burying place in the year 1739 but in the ensuing
year when famine and pestilence raged through the country and
dead human bodies were to be met with by the roads and
ditches, my grandfather, Melachlin-Garbh-O’Cómhraidhe, who
tenanted, at will (being a Papist) the tract of
land now called Moveen and in which Kilcasheen is situated,
employed himself, his workmen, his horses and sledges
in carrying the victims of the plague from all parts of the
neighbouring district and burying them here, so that it has
continued ever since to be a burial place, although not a
popular one.
- In 1847, O'Curry wrote a more detailed account in a letter to
George Petrie, published in Chapter VI, entitled "Famine", in
James Carty's Ireland - From Grattan's Parliament to the
Famine - A Documentary Record (Dublin, 1949, pp. 157-8):
In 1739, the frost set in severely some days before
Christmas, and totally destroyed all the potatoes that had
been left in the ground. The frost was so great, and of so
long continuance, that the people were not able to open the
ground for the reception of the spring seed; and hence a great
dearth of food, and a destructive mortality, ensued. My
grandfather was at this time living at Moveen, near Kilkee, in
the west of the County of Clare, and, with his brother, farmed
1,000 acres. When the famine and mortality were raging, in
1740 and 1741, his out-houses and barns were always full of
the poor, and his constant business during these two seasons
was to take care of those sick and dying creatures, and
frequently to bury them himself, alone. The ordinary burial
grounds were not capacious enough to receive the crowds that
were dying around him; but there was a long unfrequented
burying ground called Killcasheen, on his own lands, and about
two miles from his own house. In this place he got his workmen
to dig deep and long trenches, in which he buried all that
died in his neighbourhood, covering them often with his own
hands; for such was the terror of the stoutest men, that they
fled from the presence of the dying and the dead; not only did
he aid in burying those who died in his own neighbourhood, but
he went with his horses and slide (a cart without wheels, of
which I remember to have seen some specimens) all over the
parish, taking the dead and often putrid bodies out of the
deserted houses, and out of the ditches, and, heaping them on
to his slide, like so many sacks of corn, brought them to his
own burying ground, and there cast them in as best he could,
without any assistance, and, of course, without coffins.
- Kilcasheen was possibly also used during the 1840s famine.
- Archbishop Moran of
Sydney, shortly before he became Cardinal in 1885, published this story.
- Other publications citing O'Curry's account of the burials
around 1740:
- Arctic Ireland: The extraordinary story of the Great
Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740-41, by David Dickson
(Belfast: White Row Press, 1997, p. 62);
- The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, by
Ignatius Murphy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1991, p. 72);
- etc.
- Thomas Johnson Westropp
(1860-1922) mentioned Kilcasheen in several publications and it
may have been among the countless archaelogical sites in Clare
which he sketched, but no such sketch has so far come to light:
- In `The churches of County Clare, and the origin of the
ecclesiastical divisions in that county', Proceedings of
the Royal Irish Academy, 1900-1902, Vol. 6, pp.
100-180, read to the Academy on 25 Jun 1900, Kilcasheen (no.
166) was a `mere site' rather than `existing ruins' in a list
of 233 sites (plus 23 further churches whose sites were
unknown). He wrote:
166. Kilcasheen, Sheet 56. - Moyarta Parish. Here
the grandfather of Eugene O'Curry, buried the bodies of
those who died in the pestilence of 1739, bringing the
bodies thither on "sledges."
- In `Carrigaholt (Co. Clare) and its neighbourhood: Part I',
Journal of the North Munster Archaeological Society, 1911,
Vol. I(4), p. 227, he wrote:
The little graveyard at Kilcasheen, near Moveen,
was long disused, but in a great "plague", Eugene O'Curry's
grandfather, Melachlin Garbh O Comhraidhe, who held Moveen
at will from the Westropps of Lismehane, charitably employed
his workmen, with horses and sledges, to collect and bury
the dead there. I remember sledges in use made of two beams,
meeting in angle over the animal's back, and with cross
pieces below. I do not know if such still exist in Clare.
- In `Carrigaholt (Co. Clare) and its neighbourhood: Part III:
Kilcredaun to Ross', Journal of the North Munster
Archaeological Society, 1912, Vol.
II(2), pp. 103 and 105:
there are a number of church remains ... as well
as graveyards and church sites at Moyarta, Kilcashin,
Kiltrellig, Kilcoan and possibly Kilbaha, Killeenagh,
Killinny, and Kilclogher, where the prefix may refer to
woods, though the last two have Killeen graveyards, and so,
very probably, had churches ...As for the other churches,
Kilcashen, a part of MacMahon’s estates was granted to G.
Earl of Kildare in a patent of May, 1601, but the building
is not named.
- Many local (mostly unbaptised) children were buried in
Kilcasheen:
- McNamaras?
- Morrissey
- Curtin
- Lynches
- etc.
- The last (adult) burial is believed to have been either that
of
- Kilcasheen has remained a disused burial ground since 1953.
The campaign
- Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, required burial grounds to
be fenced and kept in decent order.
- As far back as 24 October 1986, the Clare Champion published a
letter from the late Padraig de Bhaldraithe (senior) suggesting
"cleaning up and fencing in the little graveyard at Kilcasheen
and erecting a small plaque there". He wrote:
This graveyard is situated in a field about a
hundred yards to the north of Moveen School and is now almost
totally overgrown by grass, weeds and bushes and is frequently
trampled over by cattle. It contains four flat tombstones and
numerous upright, irregularly-shaped "flags", all without
inscription. A patch in the centre, covered by rocks and
bushes, is probably the section where Melachlin [O'Curry]
interred the famine victims in 1740.
- Paddy Mullaney wrote to the Clare County Express in
August 1996.
- The presence of the unmarked 1740 famine graveyard at
Kilcasheen within the boundaries of the former Kilrush Poor Law
Union was among the reasons that Kilrush was chosen to host the
National Famine Commemoration in 2013.
- 12 May 2015: Facebook page
- 6 July 2017 letter from Clare County Council official:
Committee Solicitor to liaise with Clare County
Council at the point where the purchased land is to be
transferred from the current owner with a view to transferring
this land to the Council. It is understood your committee has
been informed the purchased land cannot be transferred to the
committee itself.
- 1 September 2017: article in Clare Champion
- 7 February 2018: Nuacht TG4.
- May 2018: Meeting of West Clare Municipal District, Motion submitted by Cllr. Kelly:
That the Municipal District review its decision on
the graveyard at Kilcasheen, Kilkee.
- 23 November 2022: letter from Clare County Council solicitors:
Council ... will not take any responsibility for
providing access to the burial ground
- The transfer has been delayed by personnel changes in the
Burial Grounds Unit of Clare County Council, by the illness and
deaths of committee members, by the COVID-19 pandemic, by legal
queries, etc.
- Fundraising was temporarily suspended due to the commercially
sensitive negotations with landowner and County Council.
- If you know of anyone of any age buried in Kilcasheen who
should be commemorated, please let us have their surnames,
Christian names (if any), (approximate) dates and addresses.
- We are also planning to erect a monument at the new entrance
and to publish a small booklet about the history of Kilcasheen.
Updates
Committee members
- Assumpta Concannon (RIP 2019)
- Paddy Nolan (RIP 2019)
- Fr Patrick Culligan (RIP 2020)
- Marcus Haugh (RIP 2020)
- John Lynch (chairman)
- Mary Arthur (treasurer/acting secretary)
- Michael McNamara (assistant treasurer)
- Paddy Waldron (PRO)
- Fr. Michael Casey
- Robert Brown (joined 2024)
- John Williams (joined 2024)