Young Historians Uncover the Past

Clare Champion, Friday, 4th July 2008

Reading class pupils at Ennis National School have been helping to transcribe the gravestones in the old Drumcliffe Graveyard over the past school year. The heritage project is being carried out by the Clare Roots Society amateur family history group in conjunction with the Heritage Council of Ireland, which encourages groups to involve local schools in their endeavours.

A team of 10 Clare Roots volunteers took a section of the old graveyard each and set about mapping and transcribing the gravestones there. Some headstones were easy to read buy many were worn, buried or covered in ivy and moss, rendering them extremely difficult to decipher or, in some cases, totally illegible. The old recumbent slabs (flat headstones) proved the most challenging. Some graves appear to have no inscription or dedication at all.

The reading class students have now completed their section, where they photographed, transcribed and typed up over 80 old headstones. They uncovered two graves which had become totally swallowed up by the ditch. The pupils were astounded at the high rate of child mortality in the past. This led them to discover that epidemics had swept through Ennis at various times in the past.

They learned who the leading families of Ennis were over the past 150 years and discovered that people of different religious backgrounds are buried in Drumcliffe. It was an interesting way for the children to study local history, doing genuine historical fieldwork and documenting their findings.

The information gathered by the children, both pictures and text, will be available on the Clare Library website (genealogy section) by the end of the year along with the work of the other volunteer transcribers. In addition, the Clare Roots Society have had the graveyard mapped professionally using satellite technology. This map will also be available through Clare Library.

A walk-through of the old Drumcliffe Cemetery with commentary on some notable graves/vaults will be held on Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 11.00am as part of National Heritage Week.

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