The West Cork Graveyard Project’s aim is to raise awareness and foster pride in the historic graveyards of West Cork; to encourage people to visit them (even virtually) and promote genealogy tourism. It also seeks to record local heritage knowledge that might otherwise be lost to posterity and to share this information online. It also seeks to educate and inform on this rich aspect of our cultural heritage and focus attention on local craftsmanship.

There are three elements to the project:

1. Graveyard Videos

Online ‘video tours’ of local medieval graveyards giving a brief history of each site as well as some stories of those interred in them alongside a brief tour of the monuments.
To see these videos, please click here.

2. Online Database

The West Cork Graveyards Database contains the results of surveys of some local graveyards and also tens of thousands of records of burials from Cork County Council burial registers. All these records are available to access free, read more here.

3. Graveyard Signs

With the support of Cork County Council, we have creating physical signs onsite at local graveyards, giving a short history of each site alongside a list of all those known to be interred there. To date, we have erected signs at Creagh, Abbeymahon, Chapel Lane, Drinagh, Caheragh Old Graveyard and Caheragh St Mary’s, and Aughadown with more planned.

Clink here to watch a video about the West Cork Graveyard Project.

Skibbereen Heritage Centre staff and volunteers will continue to drive forward this project into the future with the kind support of Cork County Council.