New life plan for old graveyards

Plans are afoot to breathe new life into Galway’s old graveyards.

Galway City Council has confirmed that it is looking at installing a ‘garden of remembrance’ in Rahoon cemetery, where people can bury their loved ones’ ashes following cremations. Engineer Stephen Walsh is working on plans to install the garden in the extension of Rahoon Cemetery – it would be styled on the rose garden in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harrold’s Cross in Dublin.

The plan for the garden of remembrance in Rahoon Cemetery was confirmed this week to Labour Party City Councillor Niall McNelis after he suggested that the Council could bring “new life and possibilities” to the city’s old graveyards.

Cllr McNelis has asked the local authority to look at installing columbarium walls into Galway’s graveyards including in Forthill, Old Mervue, Rahoon, and Bohermore.

Columbarium walls are structures that people can place the ashes of loved ones following cremation. He says it could revive old cemeteries that no longer have space for graves.

“Forthill, for example, is a beautiful graveyard in the city centre. There are no graves left there even though there are some burials of people from old Galway families. I’m just throwing the idea out there that there and to see if there is an demand and appetite for this. I think there is.

“There are plans for a crematorium in Ballinasloe and then what do people do with the ashes? Some people sprinkle them in the sea on the way to the Aran Islands, some people put them on the mantelpiece, other people would bury the ashes in graves of loved ones, some people bring them to a favourite place of the deceased but some people would like a place in a graveyard, a garden of remembrance or a columbarium wall so that they have somewhere to go to remember their loved ones

“I’m going to get feedback on this, draw up a notice of motion and then see how we can go about doing this rather than just talking about it,” said Cllr McNelis.