Abbeystrewry Pits – Famine mass grave

What is buried here

A short walk west of Skibbereen town centre, an acre of flat grass beside the front wall of Abbeystrewry cemetery covers the remains of between 8,000 and 10,000 men, women and children who died of starvation, fever and disease during the Great Famine (1845–1850). There is no mound and no list of names. The plot is deliberately left bare. It is free to visit and open at any hour, in the rolling fields of County Cork.

Skibbereen was one of the worst-hit towns in the country. Between 1841 and 1851 the local population fell by 36.1%, the loss split between death and emigration. In the winter of 1847 the town’s Relief Committee recorded 34 to 40 deaths a day outside the workhouse, and by December 1849 the burial ground was still taking in roughly a hundred bodies a week.

The workhouse and the pits

The Skibbereen Workhouse opened in 1839 to hold 800 paupers. By March 1847 overcrowding had pushed that to 1,450, and at the height of the crisis more than 60 people a day were dying of typhus and yellow fever. When the workhouse and the surrounding graveyards filled, the north-west corner of Abbeystrewry was turned over to mass burial.

Contemporary accounts describe bodies buried without coffins, often at night, with no priest and no ceremony, under three inches of earth. A correspondent for The Examiner wrote at the time:

“The dead are enclosed in rude boards, having neither the appearance nor shape of a coffin and are committed to their silent resting place in the night time, when no eye can rest curiously on the rude contrivance, or observe the absence of friends and mourners, and the want of all that ceremony so grateful to the pride and consolatory to the feelings of the Irish peasant.”

The memorial

Five inscribed headstones flank the plot, each carrying a quotation chosen for the place. Opposite each one stands a plain stone stool, so you can sit and read rather than just pass through. In 1887 the local blacksmith Eugene McCarthy raised a larger stone monument over the grave.

The cemetery is far older than the Famine. It dates to the 13th century, when it served a Cistercian abbey known in Irish as Mainistir na Sruthrach, the Abbey of the Stream. The medieval church fell to ruin but the graveyard stayed in use. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, later a central figure in Irish republicanism, lived in Skibbereen through the Famine and saw the mass burials; he wrote of helping to dig his own mother’s grave.

Visiting

The walk from town is level and fine for buggies and most wheelchairs, though some of the older paths inside the cemetery are uneven. This is an active cemetery as well as a memorial, so keep noise down, stay on the paths and mind the surrounding graves. The subject is heavy but the site is safe and manageable for children, and the short walk plus the seating make it an easy stop.

Parking is the weak point. There are only a few spaces on the narrow road beside the graveyard; recent council widening added a handful more, but in summer it is easier to park in town and walk out.

Practical information

Getting there

• By car: From the N71, turn onto the minor road to the cemetery and follow signs for Abbeystrewry graveyard.
• On foot: From the town centre or the Heritage Centre, follow the footpath along the Ilen River westward. About ten minutes, well marked.
• By bus: Skibbereen is on regular Bus Éireann routes; the town stop is a short walk from the entrance.

Make a day of it

Most people pair the pits with the Skibbereen Heritage Centre, which has interactive exhibits, audiovisual displays and a virtual tour of Famine sites; it gives you the context that the bare plot, by design, withholds. After that you could walk the Ilen River, catch the Friday Skibbereen Country Market in Abbeystrewry Hall, or drive out to the coast at Ardfield. If you only have time for one thing, do the centre first and the grave second.