St Mary's Church and Graveyard, Thomastown, county Kilkenny

As part of the Kilkenny Heritage Week events held in August 2018 we were honoured to be invited to give a guided tour of the memorials in the ancient graveyard and former church at St Mary's, Thomastown.  There has been a church on this site from 13th century but the present building dates from only 1818, so this was the 200th anniversary of its erection. The church building is now a private residence and we thank the owners for their generous hospitality, both to us and to the people who, despite the rain, turned out for the tour.  Thank you!  It was great to see you all including two ladies from Canada, Reverley and her daughter Camryn,  who were on a search for the burial places of their Kilkenny ancestors.

This is a graveyard with both Catholic and Protestant burials.  There are 225 memorials in all which includes 30 markers which record a burial place but without the person being identified.  The site is very old and has 13 ledger slabs or parts of ledger slabs.  There are five memorials dating from the 17th century and 32 from the 18th century.  There are 31 memorials dating from between 1800-1850. 

A display of some of Bernie's rubbings of 17th century memorials

And the dog came too!

Viewing some of Bernie's  rubbings of 17th century memorials carved with symbols of the Passion

One of our favourite stones erected by Captain Christopher O'Connor of Philadelphia in memory of his parents.

View of some of the memorials now erected in the entrance hall of the former church

The next day, we were happy to help Reverly and Camryn find some of their Raftice family headstones in Derrynahinch, Knocktopher and Ballyhale; they also got a quick tour of the Carrickshock Memorial as their people had been involved in  the battle of Carrickshock and the Tithe War of 1831.  They got quite a baptism of fire into the basic fieldwork we do, crossing fields of cows, dealing with lethal stinging nettles and thistles and also the irritating biting ants......but we all had fun and we were sorry to see them go on their way back to Dublin to catch their flight to Canada.  Come back soon!  We have actually had a really busy summer and have accumulated quite a bit of interesting material.  We will start posting some of these graveyards soon.  

We also wish to thank people for their kind comments about our article on Kilkenny Graveyards and tombstones which had just appeared in Irish Roots, 2018 Third Quarter  (issue No 107).   Thank you very much!