A Swifte Burial



Located beside a now-disused church and within an old graveyard at Castlerickard, County Meath is this curious limestone pyramid, each of its steeply pitched sides carrying a raised diamond. One of them carries the name Swifte, indicating that the monument commemorates a member of the family of that name, possibly Godwin Swifte who died in 1815 and owned a property in this part of the country, the picturesquely named Lionsden, which still stands. Godwin Swifte belonged to a branch of the same family as Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. 



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