John Tierney's blog

Today, the 10th of July 2011, is a National Day of Commemoration for servicemen and women who have died in wars or in service with the United Nations. Nearly every family in Ireland will have a story that relates to family members who died in service. My own great-grandfather is commemorated in Thiepval having died in WWI and I will tell his story here some other day.

For today I will relate a personal memory from 1980. We grew up in married quarters in Collin's Barracks on the NE side of Cork city. Married quarters consisted of four large accomodation blocks which held about thirty families from throughout Ireland but I seem to remember a decidedly Tipperary bias to the families origins, there were Burkes, Lonergans and Hogans. The families came together on a weekly basis for mass in what I think is called the Garrison Chapel while the broader community (servicemen and families) came together for Passing Out ceremonies, Christmas parties and less regularly, army funerals.

In the porch of St Peters Church in Ennisnag (http://www.historicgraves.ie/graveyard/st-peters/kk-spen) is a 13th century graveslab which is inscribed Johannes Filius Galfridi (John Fitz Geoffry). The slab was situated in the eastern portion of the graveyard and was relocated to the porch some time after 1952.

Just in from a great day spent with the Lisdowney historic graveyard group.

Professor Laurie Taylor on BBC 4's Thinking Allowed is worth a weekly listen and today his discussion with Dr. Kate Woodthorpe delves deeply into modern, East London, attitudes to death, burial, bodies and cemeteries.

Reference

The British Cemetery in very accessible in Funchal town centre and should be on every tourist's itinerary if they have any interest in history. Over ten different nationalities are represented in the two sections of the cemetery as Funchal was a key node in global trade networks.

The Jewish Cemetery can be found at the western end of the Rua da Lazareto in Funchal.

In February 2010 the island of Madeira was hit by a series of storms which resulted in major floods and landslides, causing at least 42 deaths.

As a hyperlocal heritage project we find it easy to spot top quality hyperlocal journalism  - our friends in Kilcullen gave us a write-up in their blog, as well as in the Kildare Nationalist. Des Travers led the way in historic graveyard recording in Kilcullen and it has been a pleasure to work with Des on their project. We have some high precision GPS tracks from Des' work and we will combine them with the historic memorial photographs previously recorded.

'On the other hand, they are relics of real people. We should treat them with respect – because we are human, and they are physical links with humans. '

Some interesting thoughts by Mike Pitts on the current debate in the UK about the reburial of human skeletal remains assemblages.