Visitor plan for historic graves

The team which identified the Irish tomb of Princess Diana’s great-great grandfather plans to open the graveyard to visitors as a part of a new, historic graves project.

The ancient Corkbeg cemetery in East Cork, where Diana’s ancestor, Edmond Roche, the 1st Baron of Fermoy, is buried, is among 10 historic graveyards which have been chosen to take part in the pilot phase of the Historical Graveyards Initiative, overseen by South and East Cork Area Development and funded by The Heritage Council.

The initiative, which grew out of a digital survey of some 20,000 headstones in 127 historic graveyards earlier this year, will see SECAD advising 10 community volunteer groups on the preparation of detailed conservation and maintenance plans for earmarked pre-17th century graveyards.

A team of specialist archaeologists, ecologists, stone masons and ironworkers will help draft the plans, which will be reviewed by Cork County Council’s Heritage Unit.

Once the plans are approved, the groups will then be cleared to undertake works within the graveyards, including minor repairs to fallen headstones, the clearing of paths, and other conservation works.

Grace Fox, a folklorist and genealogist working with SECAD, said the need for the conservation initiative emerged as volunteers on the digital survey worked in often overgrown and dilapidated cemeteries.

“But there are very strict rules governing such conservation work in these places,” she said.

“We will work with the groups on the dos and don’ts, and help them draft the conservation plans.

“It’s only a pilot project at this stage focusing on 10 graveyards, but if it proves successful, we hope to expand it.

“Historic graveyards provide an insight into the skills, crafts and lives of those who built them and are buried within them.

“They often contain a rich natural heritage, which may have been relatively undisturbed for years..”

SECAD previously funded the Historic Graves project which digitally archived 20,000 grave memorial records from 127 historic graveyards across Cork.

It was during this project that a group identified the burial place of Diana’s maternal great-great- grandfather, Baron Edmond Roche, in an unmarked mausoleum in Corkbeg graveyard in Whitegate in East Cork.

Local folklore had linked the tomb to the Roche family, of nearby Trabolgan, but there was no firm proof of who was buried within.

During the survey process, volunteers Eddie Tucker, Jimmy O’Leary and Michael Kenefick, discovered tombstone plaques buried under the roots of a tree growing out of the mausoleum bearing the names of the deceased members of the Roche family buried within.

The most notable name was Edmond Roche, the 1st Baron of Fermoy, who sat in the House of Commons for Co Cork from 1837 until 1855. He served as Lord Lieutenant of Co Cork from 1856 to 1874. He died in 1874, aged 59.

Lord Fermoy married Elizabeth Caroline Boothbym and their grandson Edmund Roche, the 4th Baron Fermoy, was the maternal grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales.

A full list of graves studied as part of the Historical Graves Survey is at www.historicgraves.ie.