More than 17,000 additional burial records from the greater West Cork area have been uploaded to Skibbereen Heritage Centre's free West Cork Graveyards Database. This upload more than doubles the number of records – all digitised from the original registers – in this exclusive collection.
The additional burial registers covered in this latest upload include Abbeymahon, Timoleague; Ardagh Rosscarbery; Ballaghboy Castletownbere; Bantry Abbey; Bere Island; Cape Clear; Clogagh Timoleague; St Mary's and Darrara Clonakilty; Drimoleague and Drinagh old graveyards; St Finbarr's Dunmanway; Droum, Castletownbere; Durrus; Eyeries; Foildarrig, Castletownbere; Glandore; Glengarriffe; Kilcaskan, Adrigole; Kilcatherine Ardgroom; Kilcrohane Old and New; Kilmeen, Rossmore; Kilmocomage; Lislee, Timoleague; Milltown and Rathbarry; Rossmore; St Mogla; and Timoleague Abbey.
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| Click to view larger and interactive map |
Click the image, right, to view an interactive map indicating the location of the 57 burial grounds included in the database.
Announcing the latest upload, Skibbereen Heritage Centre's Manager, Kerri Kearney, told Irish Genealogy News: "We're delighted to bring these 32,000 records into the public domain and we are very grateful to Cork County Council for its support of this project."
"With so many people around the world confined to their homes and with time on their hands, Skibbereen Heritage Centre's genealogy service has been inundated with online queries and there is sure to be a big interest in these records.
"We are also getting a fantastic response from all over the world to our series of graveyard video tours. As well as enabling the Diaspora to connect with their ancestors' burial places, these video tours mean a lot to local people, too, and we've had many, many messages of support and appreciation for our West Cork Graveyards Project."
The video tours give a brief history of each graveyard alongside some of the stories of those buried there as well as a 'virtual tour' of the monuments. The graveyard video tours to date cover burial grounds in Caheragh, Drimoleague, Aughadown, Abbeystrowry and Abbeymahon in Skibbereen, cillíní (children's burial grounds) in West Cork as well as one on the burial sites at Schull and Skibbereen Workhouses.
While Skibbereen Heritage Centre is currently closed to the public, its staff are working hard to digitise even more burial records, which will be added to its website in due course. New video tours of Chapel Lane and Creagh graveyards are also in production.