This is Chapel Lane graveyard, to the north of Skibbereen town in West Cork.
Known locally as the Chapel Yard,
this graveyard has served the people of this locality for centuries.
Nothing now remains of the simple 18th century chapel
that gave this graveyard its name, but burials in the Chapel Yard still continue to this day.
Generations of local people are buried here, including several early Fenians,
some veterans of the American Civil War,
numerous Famine victims, and a man who tried to save them
This graveyard featured prominently in reports during the Great Famine of the 1840s,
and two very famous illustrations relating to Chapel Lane
appeared in the newspaper the 'Illustrated London News' in February 1847,
including this one of a funeral making its way to Chapel Lane graveyard.
The Skibbereen area was devastated by the Great Famine,
losing one in three of its people to starvation, disease, and emigration.
The areas around this graveyard were particularly badly affected,
with horrific reports of suffering especially from the nearby Windmill Hill and High Street areas.
The second illustration from that era is of a small building called a watch house,
which was located inside Chapel Lane graveyard.
A graveyard watch house was a small hut, once used by families for shelter
while they watched over the graves of their loved ones for a few days after burial,
in order to prevent body snatchers from digging them up
and selling on the body for medical research.
A group of evergreen trees in the centre of this graveyard
now marks the site of the former watch house in Chapel Lane,
sketched by the artist James Mahony in 1847.
Nothing remains of the watch house today, but we do have several descriptions of it,
including one from local doctor Dan Donovan
On my return home, I remembered that I had yet a visit to pay,
having in the morning received a ticket to see six members of one family named Barrett,
who had been turned out of the cabin in which they lodged in the neighbourhood of old Chapel Yard.
and who had struggled to this burying ground and
literally entombed themselves in a small watch house.
In this horrible den, in the midst of a mass of human putrefaction,
six individuals, labouring under most malignant fever,
were huddled together as closely as were the dead in the graves around them.
Another description of the watch house comes from an American visitor in February 1847.
The miserable shed had served as a grave where the dying could bury themselves,
it was already walled round on the outside,
with an embankment of graves halfway to the eaves.
removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence,
we found it crammed with wan victims of the Famine, ready and willing to perish.
Rebellion was born out of Famine, and in the years after the Great Hunger,
Skibbereen would become known as the 'Cradle of Fenianism'
for the role many local people played in the establishment of the IRB and the Fenian movement.
These local men had witnessed firsthand the horrors of Famine,
and this experience forged their revolutionary response.
Several of these early Fenians are buried in Chapel Lane graveyard,
including Skibbereen-born Denis Downing.
Downing was a native of Skibbereen, a well-known family,
he was a close relative to Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa.
He was very involved in the Fenian movement here in Skibbereen,
and later in America.
Aged just 17, Denis Downing was arrested for his part in the early Fenian movement in 1858,
but never faced trial.
He emigrated to America in the early 1860s, and joined the Union Army,
during the American Civil War.
Downing fought in many major battles during the war,
including Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg.
The night before the Fredericksburg encounter, it said he began to sing the song 'Dear Old Ireland',
and he was joined in song by his fellow soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
Later, at the battle of Gettysburg, Denis's foot was injured,
and his lower leg had to be amputated
however, Downing still remained a soldier,
and, according to O'Donovan Rossa's memoir,
Denis Downing commanded the company that executed Mrs Surratt,
for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
Unfortunately afterwards Downing's health deteriorated,
and the late 1860s he contracted tuberculosis.
in 1871, he returned to Ireland to convalesce
and within a few days, just shy of his 30th birthday, he died,
and was buried here in Chapel Lane graveyard.
The local newspaper, 'The Skibbereen Eagle', ran an account of Downing's funeral at Chapel Lane.
The report states that his oak coffin was enveloped in the Stars and Stripes banner
that he had followed into war, and that his sword, sash, and cap were deposited on top of it.
We know that Denis was buried in this graveyard from newspaper accounts at the time,
unfortunately we don't know where.
However, there are many quite imposing
gravestones like this without inscriptions in this graveyard, so,
beneath one of these lies the body of Denis Downing.
Many others in the Fenian movement were also veterans of the American Civil War
and, indeed, the movement regarded that war as a great training ground for the fight in Ireland
Francis Welpley from High Street Skibbereen, active in the Fenian movement in America,
was killed in action while fighting for the Union Army in 1864.
After the war, his widow had his body disinterred and returned here to Chapel Lane,
among 'his own to rest'.
Unfortunately, his burial location is also now unknown,
but William believes this cast iron plaque may well mark his grave.
There are generations of local people buried in this graveyard here in Chapel Lane,
including some once wealthy property owners in Skibbereen.
In the early 19th century, the largest ratepayers in the Barony of Carbery were the McCarthys of Skibbereen.
They owned a large brewery here in the town, and the patriarch, Daniel McCarthy, was very active in Famine relief.
Daniel McCarthy lived in Lough Hyne House during the Great Famine,
and was an active member of the Skibbereen Relief Committee
that provided free soup to the people of this area during that terrible time.
After the Famine, Daniel McCarthy moved his family into Skibbereen
where he built a replica of his former home at Lough Hyne just outside the town in Glencurragh.
His descendants lived in Glencurragh House until it was burnt to the ground in the 1920s.
We know from newspaper accounts that the McCartneys were buried here in Chapel Lane,
we believe they're buried in this very imposing tomb because the McCarthy name is on it,
But none of the Christian names so we cannot be certain that this is where the McCarthy's lie.
There are many more unmarked and uninscribed graves here in Chapel Lane
with the names of those buried in them now long forgotten.
Local folklore says that there is at least one unbaptised baby buried just inside the gate here,
and there are certainly numerous nameless victims of the Famine buried in the old Chapel Yard.
But for now, we'll finish with a short tour
of some of the inscribed headstones here in Chapel Lane graveyard.