The Historic Graves project tweeted yesterday that its community-based surveying groups have now surveyed a quarter of all graveyards in the Republic of Ireland.This means the survey results of some 800 of ROI's 3,600 historic burial grounds are now held on the project's interactive website – HistoricGraves.com. All counties except Donegal and Louth are represented. I don't know the exact total number of graves surveyed, but (based on some stats produced by the project team back in 2012), I'd estimate it's in the region of 68,000. (See below.) They are searchable by graveyard name and name of the deceased.
Survey results include maps and plans with GPS positioning; inscriptions and photos of individual headstones; views of the graveyards; and audio and video stories of the residents of the burial ground or the local community.
Historic Graves was set up seven years ago as a community-focused grassroots heritage project. Since then, more than 500 local community groups have been trained in low-cost high-tech field survey techniques and in building a multi-media online record of their historic burial places and associated stories. Most surveys are funded by local development partnerships through LEADER funds and are supported by Local Heritage Officers, County Archaeologists and Local Authorities.
However, some groups are still waiting to begin their surveys due to a lack of funding, so the Historic Graves team has started to crowdfund. If you've benefitted from the information produced by one of the community-led surveys, or if you simply want to support this worthwhile project, please consider making a donation.
UPDATE 19 April: John Tierney of Historic Graves kindly sent me some more recent statistics, even more impressive!
