I’ve been up around Glasnevin before in a vain attempt to find Brendan Behan’s grave; I don’t know what possessed me, it was a beautiful day, I’d just finished reading The Hostage and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, I failed in the attempt, but promised myself I’d come back some day and have another look. So, given the oppurtunity this weekend, the three CHTM heads, accompanied by LukeF (of LukeF Comics,) took a walk to Irelands largest necropolis where we hooked up with the official tour- led by Shane MacThomáis, son of the great Dublin historian Eamonn MacThomáis, a man who I personally have a lot of time for, and I’m sure the other two lads here are the same. Some of his documentaries can be found here.
The cemetary is home to the graves of approximately 1.2 million people; A far cry from the nine acres it started out with in 1832,the area now stands at over 120 acres on one side of the road and a further 40 acres on the other, where the body of Luke Kelly now rests. It came into being initially due to reforms pushed through by Daniel O’Connell, whose tomb sits at the entrance to the cemetary. Prior to it’s existence, death was an expensive thing to endure, there being no Catholic burial grounds in Dublin and it costing a small fortune to bury a Catholic in a Protestant one. O’Connells tomb is of course marked by a 170ft tall round tower, which tends to stand out a wee bit! The tomb was the target of a loyalist bomb attack in the seventies, which shook the tomb itself, and blew up the stairs encircling the inside of the tower, closing it to the public. The Cemetary is surrounded on all sides by high stone walls, with towers on each corner. Not there to keep the dead in, they were built to keep grave robbers out. Grave robbing was a lucrative business in the 19th Century, corpses fetching £2, quite a sum in those days. Guards manned the towers from dusk to dawn, armed with muskets and pistols.
JayCarax said it on the way up here and he was right: It isn’t a case of who is buried here, it’s easier to say who isn’t. For within a stones throw of the gate, you have Daniel O’Connell, as mentioned above, Eamonn DeValera, Michael Collins, Michael Malone, Maud Gonne, Jim Larkin, Roger Casement, Cathal Brugha, The O’Raghallaigh and Frank Ryan, amongst any number of important historical figures. The virtual map on the Glasnevin Trust site gives you a better of who is buried, and where, and is definitely worth having a look at.
Whilst amongst the masses of graves friends and comrades lay side by side, mortal enemies are often not within spitting distance of each other either. For while Big Jim Larkin turns to dust beneath the Glasnevin soil, likewise does William Martin Murphy whose palatial tomb is within sight of the modest grave Jim and his family are buried in. While Frank Ryan is buried within sight of the gate, Eoin O’Duffy is also. Glasnevin is, and has always been, a multi-denominational cemetary. Buried and cremated here are Catholic and Protestant, Sikhs and Jews. Rich and poor also, the cemetary is home to the Millenium Plot (what would have formerly been known as a “paupers plot.”) This is looked after by the charity “Alone” who maintain the plot and make sure people buried there are buried with dignity, giving them a full funeral, headstone and flowers. Fair play due there. In one of the older paupers plots, up to 25,000 bodies are buried in a relatively tiny area, not far from Parnell’s grave. Many of the dead were victims of a cholera outbreak in the late 19th century. A couple of years after their burial, fresh outbreaks of Cholera were reported in the Drumcondra / Ballybough area. For not far beneath the soil where their bodies lay is a maze of underground streams, all emtying into the Tolka River- the disease had assimilated into the soil and on into the water, making its way back into circulation. Nasty times.
Above is a stone that caught my attention the first time I visited, and again on our visit on Monday, a memorial to the Indian Mutineers of 1920. Theres is an interesting story. Upon hearing of the uprising in their homeland, hundreds of Irish Soldiers fighting in the British army in India turned their guns on their generals. Though close to 400 men took part, the mutiny was quickly suppressed and eighty-eight of those men were court martialled. Fourteen were sentenced to death and the rest given up to 15 years in jails in Dagshai and Solan. Two died in the mutiny, Pte Sears and Pte Smyth. Thirteen of the men sentenced to die had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, though one man, James Daly was shot dead by firing squad. He was considered the leader of the mutiny at just 21 years old.
The tour eventually took us to the grave of Brendan Behan in the end, and my search was over. Not far from him lies the burial place of Francis Sheehy- Skeffington, brutally murdered by an Anglo-Irish officer of the 3rd battalion Royal Irish Rifles, Captain J.C. Bowen-Colthurst. Another sad story, one of 1.2 million sad stories you might say. You get the sense when walking around here that each grave has a history attached, each person buried here has had trials and tribulations of their own. And while visitors come here to see the burial sites of the famous and influential, there are others here whose personal struggles surely matched the struggles of those marked on their maps.
The new Glasnevin Visitors Centre opens this Friday. There are daily tours of the cemetary, led by Shane MacThomáis, costing €5. A bargain, tours last approx. 2 hours. Without donations and support, Glasnevin would be forced to close its gates as a national monument. Be sure to visit and support it however you can. Check out http://www.glasnevintrust.ie for more details.
Probably my favourite character of the rising, Michael Malone, is buried in the ‘Republican Plot’.
I wrote a small bit about him in the piece on the 1916 Walking Tour.
The ICA plot, which we were seeking out, is on the far side of the road sadly.
great piece, a lot of my family are buried there and upon every visit i spy something new.
i hope you stop into the gravediggers for a pint!!
A lovely piece on what is actually a lovely place. I was up there over the Christmas burying my Aunt and my Mother gave us a tour of various family plots with a few of the above names thrown in.
Looking at the virtual map it appears that none of the ‘famous’ people are buried on the Left, where my own relatives are mostly buried.
I just happened to be reading the comments of Glasnevin where supposingly my mother is buried .I attend the Blessing of the Graves on the last Sunday of June ever 2 years though I try comming to tend to her grave as often as possible. I’m nearly certain it is my mother who is buried in Glasnevin .I’m a doubthing Thomas give all the information I have so far gathered I just want to make sure as to who I am. I have turned 60 so I have very little time left to find out. Wish all You like minded people good health ! Anthony
Does anybody know the date of when Daniel O’Connell was buried in Glasnevin.
I know he died in Genoa on 15 May 1847, but how long did it take to bring his body back to Ireland?
There was a huge funeral procession to Glasnevin for his burial.
My father went missing in 2003 and I was contacted in 2004 to say he had died and had been buried in the Millenium Plot in Glasnevin. Because he had disappeared without telling anyone where he was we were unaware of his death, or a funeral until well after he had died and Interpol had managed to find his family. I am grateful to the charity who gave him a decent burial and despite the sadness of being buried in a ‘paupers grave’ I know he would be pleased to be buried at Glasnevin alongside the poets, writers and historic figures that he loved and admired.
why do the irish whine about the past so much. the people above were traitors what would you expect the british to do such cowards
Can only presume you’re a wind up merchant “is lowson” so I won’t rise to the bait!
[…] Ci did a nice piece on the cemetery, which is over here. He looked at some of the most high profile graves in […]
Glasnevin is a gem to be sure. All the more so because the large hole in Irish ancestry made by the ignorant thugs who burned the records office in the Four Courts can be filled by going through Glasnevin Cemetery’s records. You can even download a .jpeg of the actual grave book entries which will often yield even more information such as the cause of death and who arranged the funeral. By going through a few reams of records I even discovered there appears to have been a woman in Abbey St who sold the same grave multiple times till there were 19 bodies in it. By going through the list of people in a single grave it’s also possible to find the names of in-laws and siblings of the female branches of the family. Some records combined with other research can reveal family members who were imprisoned or confined to Magdalene laundries (not that there’s a whole lot of difference).
But even in the way the records are sold and handled you can’t avoid Irish Celtic Tiger rip off culture and backwards Irish thinking.
If you pay into the museum one of the bonus points is that you can browse all their records at no extra charge on one of the six Apple computers upstairs. Then dumbo Irish thinking kicks in. You can’t email relevant records to yourself or even print them off. Try doing the same online where you pay for each relevant record or rather what you might guess is a relevant record and you could end up bankrupt.
Between myself and my cousins we set out to download every person on both sides of the family who had the same last name in common. Between a group of us we collectively passed €10,000 within 9 weeks of beginning our searches.
Everything costs money and the really brilliant job of digitising Glasnevin’s burial records had to be a costly venture but the prices they charge are not justified.
Is John (jack) Weldon Arbour Terrace dublin buried here?
We (the family) think so but were unable to check.
[…] Glasnevin (visited by us here) gets it recognition from who its inhabitants, Mount Jerome gets its from its beauty. But it is […]
Very good article about Glasnevin cemeterybug no mention at all of all the women – including celebrated writers – who are buried there!