HistoricGraves: Nine Roscommon graveyards surveyed

HistoricGraves.com spent much of last Autumn working with community groups at nine graveyards in Roscommon, and the fruits of those labours are now appearing on their website.

The project, which was funded by the Heritage Council and Roscommon County Council, trained local communities to survey their local burial grounds and publish their findings online. So far, images of all 1,930+ headstones and memorials in the nine sites have been uploaded to HistoricGraves.ie along with transcriptions for the grave markers in three of them. Data from the other sites will be added as each of the groups complete their surveys.

The graveyards surveyed were:

• Ballaghaderren Old
  
• Ballaghaderren Church of Ireland
  
• Old Kilcolman
  
• Tibohine Old
  
• Kilkeevin
  
• Ballinderry
  
• St Coman's, Roscommon
  
• Kilbarry
  
• Kilglass

In the weeks before Christmas, the third and final part of a survey of St James's graveyard, James's Street, Dublin was also carried out on memorials numbered 481 to 670. . Again, all the images of stones and other memorials have been uploaded to HistoricGraves.com, and transcriptions are now starting to appear, too.

I hadn't had a root around the website for some time and I was amazed at how the database has grown while I wasn't looking! If you haven't checked it out recently, I recommend you do. There are now around 180 burial ground surveys on the site, most of them in Ireland, but also with a scattering from the UK and further afield.