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A Visit to Glasnevin Cemetery
PAULA REDMOND recalls the history of the country’s larget graveyard and some of the well-known personalities buried there.
Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin is Ireland’s largest graveyard. Covering an area of over one hundred and twenty four acres, one and a half million people are laid to rest within its confines. Many of Ireland’s revered leaders, politicians, musicians, writers and other public figures are buried in Glasnevin – including Michael Collins, Charles Stewart Parnell and Éamon de Valera to name but some.
As a result of the Penal Laws of the 18th century, Catholics had no cemetery of their own in which to bury their dead. The issue came to a head when a Catholic priest in Dublin was reprimanded by a Protestant sexton for attempting to perform a shortened version of a Catholic funeral Mass.