Conwal Cemetery – Letterkenny's old stones

Overview

Conwal has two layers of memory, and the older one is the more unusual. Around 1968 a tidy-up gathered the site’s early Christian cross slabs and cruciform stones onto a flat-topped cairn, where they now sit as an open-air lapidarium you can actually read, rather than scattered and weathering into the grass. The newer layer is modern and military: a memorial to Irish peacekeepers killed serving abroad. The cemetery (Irish: Reilig Conbháil) lies on the southeastern slopes of Glendoon Hill, about 1.5 km west of Letterkenny in County Donegal along the R250 (Church Road), with the Forglug Burn running below before it joins the River Swilly. It is still an active burial ground, so the old stones share the ground with modern plots.

If you only have time for one thing, make it the cairn and its carved stones; if you’ve any connection to the Defence Forces, seek out the IUNVA memorial instead.

History

Conwal began as an early ecclesiastical settlement – a monastery thought to date from the 7th century, a reading supported by archaeological testing in 1997 and by the ruined medieval church still on the site. Documents already called that church a ruin in 1622; by 1835 only a fragment of the south wall, about 15 ft high, and parts of the north wall survived. The structure measured roughly 17.5 m by 6.5 m internally. The ivy-clad south wall now stands to about 4.5 m, with the lower courses of the north wall still visible.

In 1636 the ground was formally laid out as the burial place for the Church of Ireland parish of Conwal and Leck, and the oldest legible headstone dates to 1650. The mid-century tidy-up, around 1968, reshaped a grassy rectangular mound beside the south wall into the stone cairn that displays the carved stones today.

What to see

The cairn and carved stones

The flat-topped cairn is the heart of the place: at least eighteen cross slabs, six upright cruciform stones and a run of recumbent graveslabs, gathered where you can compare them side by side. The standout is a recumbent slab 2.36 m long, traditionally linked to Godfrey O’Donnell, the chieftain who died in 1258. It carries a wheeled cross flanked by interlace, with bosses and spiral motifs. Find too a slab showing a human figure in an orans (praying) pose, a swastika-type design with square spirals, and crosses that range from simple incised lines to elaborate wheeled forms with hollow angles.

The ruined church

Walk the ivy-covered south wall and the low north-wall courses. The nave outline (17.5 m × 6.5 m) is still clear, and the broken altar base at the east end marks where the medieval liturgy happened. The headstones around it track three centuries of changing fashion: 17th-century recumbent slabs carry Puritan-influenced skull-and-crossbones motifs, while the 18th and 19th centuries brought upstanding headstones, obelisks and family plots set inside decorative iron railings.

The UN peacekeeper memorial

A memorial erected by the Irish United Nations Veterans Association (IUNVA) Post 19 honours Irish Defence Forces, Garda Síochána and civilian personnel who died serving on UN peacekeeping missions. It lists deployments in the Congo, Cyprus, Lebanon, the Middle East, Sarajevo, East Timor and elsewhere. IUNVA Post 19 keeps a second peacekeepers’ memorial in Bernard McGlinchey Town Park in central Letterkenny, if you want to see both.

St Catherine’s Well

A short walk from the ruins, St Catherine’s Well (Tobar na Congbhála) is a stone basin in the scrub – a quiet spot, no more. Folklore says a landlord once tried to close the spring, only for the water to burst out again, the kind of story that tends to attach itself to wells people did not want to lose.

Other features

A carved stone seat sits under a mature oak near the James Duffy VC memorial. Two historic gateways survive: a simple rubble-stone one on the western boundary, and a formal ashlar-stone one on the south, where cut-stone steps climb to the raised burial platform. The western boundary runs alongside the Forglug Burn, with mature trees and birdlife along the water. The National Library of Ireland holds glass-negative photographs of the cemetery taken by Robert French between 1865 and 1914, useful if you want to see how the layout has changed.

Notable burials

The modern cemetery holds graves of several well-known Donegal figures:

A common mix-up worth getting straight: the outlaw Count Redmond O’Hanlon is often tied to Conwal in folklore, but the reputed O’Hanlon family gravestone is at the separate Conwal Parish Church in the town centre, not here.

Getting there and visiting

Entry is free, dawn to dusk, with no visitor centre, ticket office or set hours otherwise. From Letterkenny, take the R250 west (towards Churchill) for about 1.5 km; the cemetery is on the right, with parking near the entrance. The site is small enough that a short walk covers everything. For navigation, use 54.9421 N, 7.7815 W.

Access is mixed: the cut-stone steps at the south gateway are not wheelchair-friendly, but the western entrance gives a level approach for visitors with limited mobility. This is a working cemetery, so keep noise down near newer plots, and treat the carved stones gently – they’re fragile, so don’t climb on them and stay on the paths. Allow 15–30 minutes for the ruins and main memorials, or 45–60 if you want to read the older inscriptions and the architectural detail properly. For the IUNVA memorial specifically, IUNVA Post 19 can be reached on +353 87 277 4879 or through their website.

Nearby

• Newmills Corn and Flax Mills (about 3 min drive west on the R250) – a restored industrial complex with one of the largest working waterwheels in Ireland.
• Conwal Parish Church (about 5 min drive east, Letterkenny town centre) – the 17th-century successor to the old parish site, with the O’Hanlon family gravestone and the grave of Lord George Hill.
• Donegal County Museum (about 5 min drive east in Letterkenny) – in a former workhouse, with exhibits on the county’s archaeology and social history.