Bealady RC Cemetery

[Rakiura John]

Hi. I'm looking at 3 RC Baptisms 1848, 1849 & 1851 (in RC Parish of Rathdowney), 2 of which mention the places "Balady", the other "Donamore". I'm assuming these would be the adjacent townlands of "Barny & Bealady" and "Donaghmore" in Donaghmore Civil Parish.

I'm trying to find where RC residents of these townlands would have been buried. Google tells me burials are still taking place in the "Bealady Cemetery". Can anyone tell me please:
- if this cemetery would be the likely burial place for RC residents in the above townlands?
- when the burials in this cemetery began (if only modern burials, where would 19th century RC residents of these townlands have been buried?)
- where I might find Burials and/or headstone transcriptions for this cemetery? (Dr Jane Lyon's transcripts on From-Ireland don't seem to include Bealady Cemetery)
regards, John

[Kiltaglassan]

Hi John,

(....in RC Parish of Rathdowney), 2 of which mention the places "Balady", the other "Donamore". I'm assuming these would be the adjacent townlands of "Barny & Bealady" and "Donaghmore" in Donaghmore Civil Parish.

I'm trying to find where RC residents of these townlands would have been buried. Google tells me burials are still taking place in the "Bealady Cemetery".

Barny & Bealady townland with Donaghmore townland adjacent to the east.
https://www.townlands.ie/laois/clandonagh/rathdowney/donaghmore/barny-and-bealady/
https://www.townlands.ie/laois/clandonagh/donaghmore/donaghmore/donaghmore/

Just to the south - Johnstown Glebe townland
https://www.townlands.ie/laois/clandonagh/rathdowney/rathsaran/johnstown-glebe/

The current Bealady cemetery is in Johnstown Glebe.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4537837#map=17/52.86174/-7.60908

From Google Layers, it appears to have been constructed in late 20th century.
https://historicgraves.com/graveyard/bealady/la-bldy
https://historicgraves.com/project/laois-graveyards-survey
https://tinyurl.com/3b5d7mna

Can’t see any other RC cemeteries/graveyards in the area around Barny & Bealady but you can have a look yourself on GeoHive National Townland and Historical Map Viewer (choose Historic 25” map – 1887-1913). The church in Donaghmore was probably Church of Ireland.

https://arcg.is/18Ovea0
(scroll down to Johnstown Glebe)


KG

[dublin1850]

https://www.from-ireland.net/bealady-graveyard-records-laois/
Recent burials mainly.

An account written by a child in the 30s about old local graveyards might help.
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4770007/4766513/4957489

[Rakiura John]

Thanks for that Kiltaglasson & dublin 1950.

Looking at all those things has identified some points for me -
Donaghmore townland actually lay in 2 civil parishes. The northern portion (approx 191 acres) lay in Donaghmore civil parish, the southern portion (approx 174 acres) in Rathdowney civil parish. The significance of this from my perspective is that each portion has its own separate list of occupiers in Griffith Valuation. This division between parishes is not noted in Irish Townlands website ( townlands.ie ), which treats the 366 acre townland as being solely in Donaghmore civil parish [though perhaps there have been subsequent boundary adjustments which I'm not aware of].
Barny & Bealady townland is also in Rathdowney civil parish, not in Donaghmore parish as I initially thought.
The Bealady Cemetery is actually in the townland of Johnstown Glebe (not in Barny & Bealady townland), and that cemetery only has 20th century burials & later.
The older cemetery in the village of Donaghmore (in Donaghmore townland) is principally Church of Ireland though there are some RC burials there.
It seems I'll need to widen my spread of likely burials places for my people.

dublin1950, those school essays (with a handy search function) are interesting reading! They'll keep me occupied for a while.
kind regards
John

[athacliath62]

Thanks for that Kiltaglasson & dublin 1950.

Looking at all those things has identified some points for me -
Donaghmore townland actually lay in 2 civil parishes. The northern portion (approx 191 acres) lay in Donaghmore civil parish, the southern portion (approx 174 acres) in Rathdowney civil parish. The significance of this from my perspective is that each portion has its own separate list of occupiers in Griffith Valuation. This division between parishes is not noted in Irish Townlands website ( townlands.ie ), which treats the 366 acre townland as being solely in Donaghmore civil parish ..

townlands.ie is guilty of those for quite a few areas, not sure what their source was. Their system also seems to have an issue with townlands split across two or more Baronies.

the placename database Logainm gives the correct parish split see Donaghmore, the original townland indexes do also - seanruad swilson.info , these are based on the 1851 census index.