School: Clochar na Trócaire, Ceannanus Mór
- Location:
- Kells, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Máthais Íde
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0702, Page 299
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- About the year 1856 a dreadful fever broke out in Ireland. It was known as the Cholera. During this awful visitation the people "died like flies", and deaths were so numerous that there was no time to make coffins or graves.
Here in Kells they dug a pit the width of the Protestant Cemetery and twenty feet deep. Two carts were kept going day and night carrying the dead bodies away for burial. When the cart carrying the dead body, in a large square box, arrived at the Cemetery it was heeled backwards so that the poor corpse fell into the pit. Then the bodies were straightened out and a few shovel fulls of clay thrown over them. This part of the Cemetery is still called by the people the "Cholera Plot". It is now used by Protestants who have no special plot of their own.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Crissie Heary
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 14
