The Historic Graves Project in conjunction with four Cork LEADER companies (South and East Cork Area Development, West Cork Development Partnership, IRD Duhallow and Ballyhoura Development Ltd.) submitted digital records of over 20,000 grave memorials in 127 historic graveyards to Cork County Library last week. The data archiving event was presided over by the County Mayor Noel O’Connor and attended by Amanda Slattery (Bally-houra Development Ltd.), Grace Fox (South and East Cork Area Development), Lisa Cashman (West Cork Development Partnership), Mary McHugh (IRD Duhallow), Mary Sleeman and Connor Nelligan (Heritage Unit, Cork County Council), Eileen O’Brien (Cork County Library), John Tierney and Jacinta Kiely (Eachtra Archaeological Projects) and a number of people representing some of the community groups who participated in the project.
The project is an ongoing collaboration between archaeologists from Eachtra Archaeological Projects and many community groups, funded by the LEADER Development companies and supported by Cork County Council. Training (in recording historic grave-yards) was provided by archaeologists from Eachtra Archaeological Projects for over 420 people (community volunteers) in 40 different locations over the county in the last 2 years. The grave-yards are spread all over the county, the furthest west in Kilmoe graveyard (over-looking Barley Cove beach on the Mizen Peninsula), the furthest east located in Youghal and the furthest north in Charleville. Comm-unities from this broad region photographed and recorded the 20,000 headstone epitaphs. The communities continued to record their local graveyards after the training was completed with community archaeologists and the results were uploaded to the Historic Graves websites. Some of the communities went on to record a further graveyard/graveyards in their locality. The website was built and is maintained by Eachtra Archaeological Projects.
The results of this collaborative project are available for viewing at www.historicgraves.ie. Each partner in the collaboration has benefited by their participation and an Irish Cultural Heritage Project is leading the way in the community engagement and building bridges within and between communities at home and also abroad.