Subject: Re: [COUNTYCORK] COUNTYCORK Digest, Vol 2, Issue 91 From: David Collins <[email protected]> Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:44:09 -0400 To: [email protected] I believe Dan Murphy is referring to the place at Willowhill where my 1c2r cousin, John Mescall, is buried. I visited the site in 2000 with two Mescall cousins who told me the following story: "John was buried in the grounds of the ruins of Kilpatrick church at Willowhill after his request to be buried on the land in Kilpatrick from which he and his parents were evicted when he was a child." John was born ca 1884 in Kilpatrick and died on 7 May 1960. He was the son of Denis Mescall and Mary Looney. As Dan mentioned, you need a guide to find the graves; the place isn't on any tourist maps. There are two or three other graves there, but the area is not considered a cemetery. It is, or was in 2000, a working hay field. David Collins Hudson, MA, USA Pete Schermerhorn (in the glorious Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts) replied to the Willowhill/Kilpatrick burial ground query, as follows: Here's a bit of information on the Kilpatrick burial ground (it's actually in Kilpatrick townland, just "across the road" from the Willowhill/Kilpatrick townland boundary). The location is clearly shown on Discovery map 87, and identified by the letters, in red, "ch".....marking the site of the graveyard which contains the scant ruins of the late medieval parish church of Kilpatrick. The church ruin has walls only 4 or 5 feet high remaining, and is located at the N end of the graveyard. Here is the description of the cemetery from the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork -Vol 2, East and South Cork. The "road" reference is to the side road (which eventually leads to Tracton) off of the Carrigaline to Minane Bridge road. "On E side of road, land falls away steeply to E; rectangular graveyard (c. 40m N-S; c. 25m E-W) enclosed to E, S and W by stone-faced earthen bank and to N by stone wall and ruined parish church of Kilpatrick; partially overgrown. Filled with N-S rows of low uninscribed grave markers; three inscribed headstones, one dated 1790, two recent." The above information was based on a visit to the site by archaeologists in June 1991, so there may have been more burials since that time. That's about it. Mitchell's book, A Guide to Irish Churches and Graveyards, also mentions the location, but has no maps or grid coordinates - just the listing of the townland of Kilpatrick. I'm not able to post to any of the Rootsweb lists these days. Two months ago, AOL added their HTML tagline to all of my letters - which, because of the particular version of AOL which I use, causes the RW filters (and those at Yahoo, too) to reject my letters. Supposedly, someone is working on it. But if either of you feel that this information would have general interest to someone else on the list, feel free to forward my letter - or whatever part of its contents might be pertinent - to the list......... as I can't. Pete Schermerhorn in the glorious Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts .............................................................................. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------