2017:651 - Kilberry Graveyard Wall, Meath

Archaeological monitoring was undertaken on the Kilberry Graveyard Wall Refurbishment alongside the R163 (Kilberry-Slane Road) in the townland of Castletown Kilberry.

The R163 Graveyard wall / boundary measured approximately 88m E-W. The works also included a record and assessment of the RMP Kilberry Church ME018-022 and associated graveyard ME022001 in the possession of Meath County Council.

Works involved demolishing the existing wall/boundary and excavating back approximately 1m-1.5m into the higher ground to the north of the road. The Graveyard wall/boundary included an inscribed stone commemorated a set of Gate Piers built by Christopher Everard in 1715. The original piers had been removed in the past and replaced by a pair of octagonal gate piers that are probably later 19th century.

Probable early medieval evidence came from two iron smelting pits that had been disturbed by ploughing. From one pit came an ore or slag bloom processing anvil of local stone. The anvil had a basin-shaped hollow and a projection on the front similar to a modern anvil ‘horn’. One piece of slag bloom was also found. Considerable post-medieval and modern ploughsoils up to 1m deep covered the earlier levels.

The graveyard wall to the R163 appears to have been built around 1800 and was found to contain 21 pieces of reused 13th century moulded imported Dundry (near Bristol in England) stones belonging to now lost church windows. Three different central window mullion styles implied at least three, two-light windows, plus two pieces of probably 18th century plain red floor tiles showed the floor. A further 12 pieces of 13th century window and door stones were recorded within the graveyard, often reused as headstones.

Also within the graveyard were 13 pieces of probably Killaloe (green) and Welsh (blue) peg-hole roof slates (amongst many fragments without noticeable peg-holes). These probably date from a church refurbishment at the beginning of the 18th century. The north door of the church had been partly exposed in the southern wall. The present works found the blocked opposing North Door. Dean Cogan (1862 Diocese of Meath Vol 1) says that Kilberry Church was reduced in length to its present size in the early 17th century: this work probably involved removing the chancel and any rood screen. An old photograph shows the western gable wall had a two-light window and was capped by a bell-cote. This gable wall fell in recent memory and the current western wall is a modern rebuild. How much other rebuilding went on at that time is not precisely known, but the fallen debris along the outside of the south wall was removed, the church body emptied and then filled with loose stones. A 1968 survey mentions the base to some window mullions in the eastern wall, but these are no longer in situ.

C/o Meath County Council