In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 106) - In Loving Memory 

The inscription on the gravestone nearest to the gate says kneel and pray. Only wind chimes and the occasional passing car broke the oasis of silence.

The church and graveyard complex in Kilblaffer, or more locally known as North Kilmurray, was stumbled upon by accident by the writer whilst exploring the area just east of the Model Village, Dripsey towards Berrings. Like many graveyards, it is a quiet and peaceful space for reflection. In North Kilmurray, my visit was met with a silence, which called for respect for the dead but also to see what the living had created for their deceased loved ones.

I have grown more and more interested in graveyards in my travels in the Lee Valley. To me graveyards are the silent markers of civilisation but very important markers.  Gravestones of loved ones are very much part of a community’s past but also the present and what is to come for all of us. To me, the cross or the crucifix sign represents the power of the unknown, which impacts on my own thought and belief structures as a Catholic.

However, graveyards place heritage, what we have culturally and socially inherited, at the heart of public life. They are visible and tangible monuments saying something. Through the art and architecture of gravestones, they tell the story of the ordinary person – the everyday people whose life stories are lost in the ‘sands of time’. In a sense people are inscribed in stone and not in history.

North Kilmurray church is in ruins and lys in the north west quadrant of the graveyard. It consists of an ivy-clad ruin of rectangular gabled church in an east west orientation. Much of the western wall stands. It was formerly a chapel of ease for Inniscarra Parish and according to the archaeological inventory of mid Cork, the surviving architectural details suggest a structure of late medieval date (c.1000–c.1600 A.D.)

Within the interior of the church, there is evidence for a gallery. There is a central window in the altar gable and there is a second ruined window in the eastern end of the south wall. There are many headstones within the church from various times. It was sometime in the nineteenth century that the church went out of use and burials were placed within the interior. Not all are readable and the following are the ones I could read and I record them here for the sake of a record and to give a sense of the families buried in North Kilmurray. Those graves of a nineteenth century date comprise William Drumney, Daniel McCarthy (died 1884) and Louise Shinwin O’Mahony (1825-1896). Louise’s gravestone denotes that she was the wife of Jeremiah Gurteen, Bandon, mother of Ellie, Jerry, Joe, Tim, Willie, Julia, Lizzie, Mary and Anne. The gravestone was erected by her great great grand-daughter Mary Karen O’Neill, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, USA.