15,000 burial records from west Cork digitised and put online
A total of 15,000 burial records have been digitised and put online for the first time, which will prove a huge boost to people looking to trace ancestors buried in West Cork.
The work, which has been going on since last winter, was undertaken by staff at Skibbereen Heritage Centre, and it contains burial records in cemeteries stretching from Ardfield near Clonakilty to Allihies on the Beara Peninsula in the west.
Terri Kearney, manager of the heritage centre, said they obtained the burial records, which go from the late 19th century up to 10 years ago, from the county council.
“We took photographs of them and then transcribed them onto a database. This is the first time this has ever been done and we’ve had a huge response because these were not in the public domain before,” Ms Kearney said.
The database, which is free of charge to access, will prove invaluable not just to people living in Ireland but to those of Irish heritage who are living abroad and want to trace their ancestry.
The database now holds transcriptions from registers for the following burial grounds: Abbeymahon, Abbeystrowry, Allihies, Ardagh, Ballymoney, Ballynacalla, Bawnaknockane, Brade, Cahermore (Allihies), Castlehaven Old, Castlehaven New Cemetery, Castletown Kinneigh, Coronea (St Patrick’s Skibbereen), Drimoleague, Dunbeacon, Dunmanway, Durrus, Fanlobbus, Kilheangul (near Schull), Kilbarry, Kilcaskan, Kilcoe, Kilmacabea, Kilmichael, Kilmoe, Lisavaird, Lisheen, Rathbarry, Ross Abbey, Schull, Sherkin Island, Stouke, Tullagh and Whiddy Island.
The Cape Clear funeral register has also been transcribed, as have more than 2,000 records from the Skibbereen Funeral Register.
The heritage centre's staff are currently working on completing another 5,000 records for loading online.
All the records can be accessed via www.skibbereenheritage.ie and Ms Kearney has done an introductory video to accompany them explaining the best way people can search for their ancestors.
In addition, the heritage centre staff have also embarked on creating a virtual tour of graveyards in the region.
“People are really interested in the history of graveyards. So we are embarking on creating virtual tours of them where we look at notable people buried in them and interesting headstones,” Ms Kearney said.
The first of these virtual tours to Caheragh old graveyard just north of Skibbereen has just gone online.
“We will extend these virtual tours to as many medieval graveyards as we can into the future. There’’s a lot of very rich and interesting history in these sites,” Ms Kearney said.
The video of Caheragh old graveyard’’s history can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB8nNdjiT68
