Grave Memorials in St. Michael's Cemetery Athy

It’s almost 40 years ago when with the assistance of FAS, the Industrial Training Authority, I organised a project intended to record all the headstones and grave memorials in the original St. Michael’s Cemetery. Regretfully it was a project which was not completed until many years later. The mammoth task of recording and mapping all the memorials in St. Michael’s Cemetery was eventually done by Michael Donovan, who is one of the unsung heroes of Athy and South Kildare. Michael has devoted many years of his life to recording cemetery memorials, not only in and around the immediate environs of Athy, but also further afield. To date he has completed 42 graveyard surveys, the results of which will be handed over to Kildare County Council to be made available to the general public. For many years tombstone inscriptions were an untapped source of Irish genealogy. They were largely unnoticed, except by those looking for obituary details. The work of copying tombstone inscriptions requires patience and attention to detail and Michael Donovan has spent years in recording memorial inscriptions and by doing so preserving for future generations details of families whose names are no longer familiar to us. He has also photographed the memorials and to date for the 42 cemeteries surveyed he has amassed a collection of almost 6,000 photographs. These, together with the mapping and numbering of graves in the cemetery surveys, ensure the ready identification of the location of every memorial. Grave memorials are an important part of a community’s heritage. They record lives from the past and the various types of monuments or memorials represent in many cases Irish folk art which has survived over the years. A headstone is the only piece of sculpture that most people will ever commission. In Victorian times cemeteries for the rich were gardens of stone, while the buried poor were seldom marked or noted. The local iron foundries provided metal crosses, many of which can still be seen in St. Michael’s Cemetery. The most common iron memorial comprised a cross within a circle with space for a painted inscription. Unfortunately these memorials tend to lose their painted inscription after some years. St. Mary’s Cemetery, where the remains of Workhouse inmates were laid, had quite a number of metal crosses, all of which regrettably were in recent years removed from the graves they marked. In St. Michael’s Cemetery and St. John’s Cemetery, which Michael has also surveyed, there are many fine examples of altar tombs and chest tombs. In St. John’s Cemetery he discovered a small gravestone, previously unrecorded, marking the grave of William Watson who died in 1637. Tankardstown graveyard, which surrounds the original Tankardstown Parish Church, has two 17th century memorials. Throughout St. Michael’s Cemetery can be found many elaborate monuments, mostly the work of 19th century carvers and stone masons. The practice of erecting headstone memorials did not develop until the latter part of the 18th century. Before that many graves were not marked, or if they were it was by footstones, so called as they were small plain stones placed at the bottom of graves. The Shackleton Museum holds two medieval grave slabs, believed to be of the 14th century, which were removed from St. Michael’s Cemetery for safekeeping some years ago. Monumental inscriptions to be found in St. Michael’s cemetery are generally of the genealogical epitaph type where family relationships and dates of birth are outlined. Michael has also recorded interesting supplementary details, generally quotations of a religious nature. One interesting grave memorial located within the medieval church, known locally as ‘the Crickeen’, reads:- ‘This venerable and justly loved Christian died in the 82nd year on 25th November 1849. She closed her edifying life by the fervent practice of those religious duties that ever marked her holy career. Her remains were accompanied to this earthly dwelling by an immense number of every class and creed of the entire neighbourhood which she so long adorned by her eminent and unostentatious virtue. She expired, consoled by her cherished text, from the 6th chap. 55th V of St. John. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood had everlasting life and I will raise him up on the last day.’ In addition to his survey and recording work Michael Donovan, together with Clem Roche, have just completed recording the names of the 3,891 inmates who died in Athy Workhouse or the Fever Hospital between 1871 and 1921. Theirs is a work of great importance, rivalled only by Michael’s extraordinary solitary work in mapping and recording so many cemetery memorials in and around this area. Michael Donovan’s plans for this year are to survey cemeteries in Ballybracken, Kileen Cormac, Kildangan, Timogue, Harristown and Crookstown.