Buried Faced West
By James O’Mahony, Farmer, whose hard work made the Sheep’s Head Way
possible
“I dug the grave for Jackie Tobin. And on the western side of the church, the south-western corner, we had gone down to the bottom of a grave that had been there before. I said Jackie would like to do the job right and make it deep, and we said we’d sink it more, and the earth was a bit soft underneath, and we sunk it, and we got into another burial deeper than that. We found a skull that was in under the wall about two feet, and strange enough, I thought that he was buried faced west. That would be wrong unless he was a priest.”
The Church In Ruins
By Jack Sheehan, Farmer and Local Historian, Ardahill, Kilcrohane “Carew’s soldiers knocked the church, anyway, the locals built it up again (early 17th century). You can see that still; there are different stones on the western side. And it was handed over to the Protestants, and the Protestant religion became the established religion of the country. And the story I heard was that the minister came here on three different occasions for service and nobody turned up. So he packed up and it went back again to the Catholics.
Smith said the church was in ruins in 1639; Smith wrote the “History of Cork” for the Queen. He made sure he didn’t insult the Queen, because he said the churches were in ruins, but he didn’t say why they were in ruins. Something made ruins of the churches, but he didn’t say what at all.”
There are several old tombs inside the graveyard – to the west is O’Dalys’, which has an “O’D” inscribed on a flagstone over it. To the east are two tombs of the O’Donovans.
