Memorials of the Dead

Thomastown Graveyards: Much to people’s surprise as many as thirteen graveyards can be identified within the parish of Thomastown. They are the ‘Belfry Graveyard’ [the burial ground surrounding the post-Reformation chapel], Columcille Graveyard, Famma Graveyard [Brownsbarn], Jerpoint Abbey Graveyard, Kilcullen Graveyard, Killeen Graveyard [Ballylinch], Kilvinogue Graveyard, Modaleen Graveyard, Newtown-Jerpoint Graveyard, St Columba’s Graveyard, St Mary’s Graveyard [Market St], St Mary’s Graveyard [Cloghabrody], and The Thomple Graveyard [Grennan]. It is also known from historical research that there was once a graveyard attached to the Church of St Colman at Dysart.

Click here to view the memorial list or use the In Memory link on the left of this page.

The graveyard at St Columba’s was where many of the inmates of the workhouse were buried. Their graves were unmarked. In the list that follows tombstone inscriptions from St Mary’s Cloghabrody, the current parish burial ground, are not included. Nor are the inscriptions on the ‘ancient monuments’ in the older graveyards which have been noted by the diocesan historian, Canon William Carrigan.

The following inscriptions were noted, initially, in the early 1970s and, later, added to and emended, where necessary, in the late 1980s. The style of tomb/headstone or decoration thereon was not recorded, nor its location within the graveyard. There has been no effort to standardise either the spelling of family names or townlands, nor is there any comment on obvious discrepancies that were found. Unfortunately, due to weathering and difficulty of access, a number of inscriptions are incomplete. It should be remembered that in some of the older graveyards headstones have fallen face-down and remain unrecorded. It should also be borne in mind that in times past the erection of inscribed headstones was not a universal practice, with many family plots designate by an uninscribed footstone only. In most cases the precise location of the burial plot is no longer in the family memory.

Should you note discrepancies in the inscriptions or can provide additional information (inscriptions for more recent burials) changes can be made.

Reflection

“The sun will be darkened.” How does Pope Francis say we can help bring light back to the darkened sun? And what can we learn from the fig tree?
Dear brothers and sisters, that is the word that makes hope blossom in the world and relieves the suffering of the poor: tenderness. Compassion that leads you to tenderness. We need to overcome our self-absorption, interior rigidity, which is the temptation nowadays, that of the “restorationists”, who want a Church completely orderly, completely rigid: this is not of the Holy Spirit.
We have to overcome this, in order to make hope blossom amid this rigidity. It is up to us to overcome the temptation to be concerned only about our own problems; we need to grow tender before the tragedies of our world, to share its pain. Like the tender leaves of a tree, we are called to absorb the pollution all around us and turn it into goodness.
It is useless to keep talking about problems, to argue and to be scandalized – all of us can do that. What we need to do is imitate the leaves that daily, imperceptibly, turn dirty air into clean air. Jesus wants us to be “converters” of goodness: people who breathe the same heavy air as everyone else, but respond to evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21). People who act: by breaking bread with the hungry, working for justice, lifting up the poor and restoring their dignity. As the Samaritan did.
Pope Francis