New Abbey historic graves now on web

A project which began as a Cross & Passion Transition Year endeavour has resulted in the recording of historic graves in New Abbey Cemetery on the world wide web, writes Brian Byrne, with a view to making them available to anybody who wants to trace family in the plots.

The work involved plotting to a very high degree of accuracy, using GPS, the location of the graves, and sending them along with photographs of the gravestones to a Cork-based company which is documenting historic graveyards in various parts of Ireland.

The technical part of plotting the graves was done by retired Irish Army General Des Travers, who lives in Kilcullen and has always had a keen interest in local heritage.

We reported in April on how the project was going. The next stage is to provide more information, as well as transcriptions of what is written on the more weathered stones.

Des makes the very valid point that where no documents exist relating to those buried in the graves, the research must be done where they are buried.

And he suggests that providing information in this way will bring the descendants of those people to visit Kilcullen so they can find out more.

He talks to your editor about the project here.