Stories in Stone

The Long-Lived

To reach a hundred was a rare thing, and the stones that record it rarer still. Gathered here are the only burials in the archive whose carved age reaches a full century or more: Anne Hogan of Rosemount, dead in 1920 at a remarkable 106 — born before Waterloo; the Wheatleys of Kilbarron, a husband and wife of 103 and 101 sharing one stone; and William Spedden of Nenagh, 'aged 100 years' in 1841. Carved ages on old limestone are not always to be trusted — but true or fondly rounded, each names a life measured out across a whole century, and the quiet astonishment of those who outlived nearly everyone they knew.