Today being Hallow’een, here are some rather dejected looking family mausolea in the graveyard of St Mary’s, Croom, County Limerick. One or two of them can be identified, an example being that carrying the notification, ‘This Vault was erected by Denis Lyons Esqr in Memory of his Eldest Son, and as a Burial Place of the Family, AD 1802.’ Another carries the motto ‘Fortes fortuna juvat’ (Fortune favours the Brave), along with the name of Dickson and the date 1806. The families whose remains were interred in several others, however, are no longer known and they are gradually sliding into ruin.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
Many graveyards have mausolea in poor states of repair. I sometimes wonder what will become of them through lack of care and maintenance. Of course they’ll collapse, but how much more dignified it would be to repair them sooner rather than later before the question of what to do with their contents becomes a bigger issue.
You should check out the large amount of family mausoleums in Kilmihil, clare. They are all done up like small stone cottages.
There is something sad about abandoned Tombs and Mausoleums. The fact that a family felt it was worth investing money in their creation for them to be forgotten and abandoned by latter generations. Also the sight of blocked up doors and windows to prevent intruders and vandals breaking in.
Families move away and die out. My family’s grave slabs in Co. Galway were long ignored until I re-discovered them a few years ago.
Tom
On a similar theme,
Sarcophagus
The tiny honeycombed hornets’
nest of mud has found a home
under the oxter of an Eros
who forms part of the elaborate
frieze of a roofed marble sarcophagus.
The dust and the name of the man
who commissioned it, are long lost
as its several hundredweight rests
in the museum’s garden
and the cicada loud glade.