New drive to clean up famine graveyard at Clondone, Delvin

A major drive to clean up the famine graveyard at Clondone, Delvin has been launched by local people with the support of Aontú and its leader, Peadar Tóibín, TD for Meath West. The overgrown burial ground of unmarked graves was attached to Castledelvin Workhouse, probably the last workhouse built in the country.

Deputy Tóibín visited the Clondone burial grounds recently, with Melanie McQuade, heritage officer at Westmeath County Council, and met some of the locals behind the campaign. They included local Aontú member, Michael Kenny of the Delvin Men’s Shed, who initiated the project.

On seeing the overgrown, unmarked graves Deputy Tóibín said: “It is sad that, when these people were alive, they were the most marginalised, existing in terrible conditions. Now, in death, their graves are forgotten, overrun with brambles and cattle. We will try to get this place cleaned up.

“The burial ground was last cleaned up in 2000 for a prayer service and is now covered in briars and maintained mostly by grazing cows. We will be working over the coming months to have this site marked and maintained, so in their burials the poor souls lost here during the toughest of times will have their dignity respected.”

The plan is to establish ownership of the plot of land on which the graveyard sits and then to clear and maintain a path to it. Michael Kenny and Ronan Leonard have cleared the entrance already.

It is hoped that the graveyard can be marked officially as a burial ground and the group will be working with the CCIFV Marker Project, a campaign to commemorate the victims and emigrants of An Gorta Mor, sponsored by Irish-American, Bill Fahey. Ms McQuade has provided them with resources on the care and conservation of burial sites such as this.

The local people who have been involved in the project so far are Michael Kenny of the Men’s Shed, Eamon Clancy of Delvin Historical Society, local genealogy enthusiast, Olive Power, and Laura O’Neill, a native of Delvin, secretarial assistant with Aontú and youth worker for the parish, to whom this project is important. However, several other local people have expressed an interest in helping out too.

Castledelvin Workhouse was built on a 12-acre site to accommodate 400 inmates seven years after the start of the famine. According to research carried out by Olive Power, the 1911 census shows that John Barry was its master, aged 50 and single and living there with 10 staff and 103 inmates. He describes the building as being of brick or stone with slate or tiled roof and having 39 rooms with 15 outhouses, sheds and workshops.

Ms Power found the census figures a microcosm of life at the time. She remarked on the debilitating illnesses that led people to the workhouse, including asthma and ulcers and more worrying, phthisis – wasting away or consumption. When the workhouse closed in the 1920s some of the families were allowed to stay on.

The building was demolished in the 1940s and is now the site of a small housing estate, The Spike – Spike being the colloquial name for a workhouse, according to Ms Power.

She is anxious to see the burial ground cleaned up as a mark of respect to those buried there, many of whom were known only by their initials or snippets from information gleaned from parish records or census forms.

According to the Buildings of Ireland, Clondone graveyard was attached to the Castledelvin Union Workhouse and dates to c1850. It is set within a rubble limestone wall on a rectangular plan. The graveyard is entered through an arched wrought-iron entrance surmounted by plain cross finial to northeast corner. This simple wrought-iron entrance gate with cross finial is deemed to be of artistic interest and a poignant reminder of times past.

The Buildings of Ireland website describes it as a picturesque, if sombre feature in the landscape. It says the site is of particular importance as the graveyard of the former Union Workhouse which lay to the immediate north-east of this site.

Delvin Poor Law Union was the last created in Ireland, so it is likely that the associated workhouse was also the last built in the country.

It was designed by the Poor Law Commissioners architect George Wilkinson (1814-90), c.1850, based on one of his standard designs to accommodate 400 inmates. Its construction cost £5,200 plus £885 to fit it out. The workhouse was damaged in the 1920s during The Troubles when it housed the Civic Guards, and it was demolished c.1940.

The lack of grave markers suggests unmarked graves or perhaps that the original grave markers were made from timber and have long since decayed.