A GHASTLY GRAVEYARD SCENE IN IRELAND,

Evening Post, Volume XVII, Issue 548, 28 June 1879, Page 1 (Supplement)

A GHASTLY GRAVEYARD SCENE IN IRELAND,

The Freeman's Journal gives a long and graphic description of the preient condition of Killester churchyard, near Dublin. It appears that in 1877 the Local Government Board officially closed the place as one, from a sanitary point of view, unfit for use. The following description by the Freeman's correspondent will show how far this order has been neglected, and the terrible consequences : —Presumably for the better enforcement of the order, the gate leading from the road to the churchyard h»s been recently removed, and the spaoe walled up with solid masonry. But without the intention of "knowingly or unknowingly " being guilty of a burial, a person may be tempted to cross the wall into the old closed churchyard. The scene within might well shock the strongest nerves. The whole place is strewn with the fragments of decaying mortality. The first object that meets the eye just inside the disused entrance is a coffin of dark polished wood — a child's coffin manifestly, by it3_size. It is almost new. Tne varnish is still fresh upon the wood ; the heads of the screws that fasten the lid are unrußted. There has been no interment — no pretence of an interment. The coffin lies, as it ha 3 been laid, on the surface of the earth ; and how it came there, and when, is certainly a mystery that demands solution. No criminal would thus expose the body of the victim ; no parent or friend would surely be satisfied with suoh maimed funeral rights— would let the body of the dead child lie and rot like a dog over-ground. But this coffin, though the Strongest, is by no means the only or the most revolting spectacle the place contains. It is a very small churchyard, scarce an acre in extent, sunk down between four high walls, and littered with white, unhealthy elder bushes and rank weeds. It is truly a gruesome plaoe in the grey twilight. From a large garden acrosß the road comes the cheery piping of the redbreast and the shrill notes of the throstle cutting the still air, but within the precincts of the churchyard it is as silent as though it were one great grave. Within the ruins family buryingplaces were evidently, in the old times, preserved. There is a broad headstone on which the date of October 16, 1875, is inscribed, which tells that Peter Byrne, Eleanor Byrne, husband and wife, Rev. P. H. Byrne and Peter Byrne, brothers, all he interred in the grave at its foot. But all over the grave where they lie is stuck with rude wooden crosses, to mark new interments, and show how little the sanctity of their repose has been respected. Perhaps the most pitiable spectacle are scattered fragments of mouldering coffinß and discolored bones. Bits of broken tombstones and battered coffin plates are littered in all directions. Some of the coffins are a few inohes above the surface, others lie level with the ground. The lids in many cases have been wrenched off with apparent Jviolence— how, it is needless to inquire— and the open coffins are so many little bits of festering corruption. The horrors are too horrible to detail. '3|Th6 whole scene is one of unutterable wifdness and desolation. In the centre of the graveyard there is a small religious ruin, whose broad round arohes -would seem to speak great antiquity. It is muffled Jin thick ivy, and in this place of horrors is one poor grave which love has attempted to beautify. It Ib framed in with stioks and rough Btones, and on the brown earth over the grave a few sickly flowers are withering in the unwholesome air. Of course, now that public attention is directed to the condition of the graveyard, the sanitary authorities— they of the North Dublin Union— will take immediate steps for the decent interment of the dead, and for the prevention of the recurrence of the horrible profanations that have been described.