Stories in Stone

The Oldest Stones

Some of these stones have weathered three hundred winters. Gathered here are the archive's oldest monuments — every one dating entirely from the eighteenth century or before, reaching back to a Finch family slab from the 1650s. Their lettering is worn and their spelling older still ('Here lyeth the body…'), and many a name has all but vanished into the limestone. Read together they are the deepest layer of memory in the graveyards of Nenagh: the merchants, soldiers, priests and children of Georgian Tipperary and the generations before them.