Old Kenmare Cemetery (An Irish Famine Cemetery):

The old Kenmare Cemetery can be found just outside the town of Kenmare. (Take the road to Glengarriff and just over the bridge, turn left and just before you come to the Sheen Falls hotel you will find the graveyard) . There's a sign that says no access but this means no access to the land beside the Burial Ground.

The graveyard was the site of an early monastic settlement founded by St Finian of Innisfallen who died at the end of the 7th Century. The Church of St Finian is in now ruins.

Nearby you will see the Famine Plot (Irish potato famine) where over 5,000 local people are said to have been buried during the great famine. Such was the level of poverty in the area during the great Irish famine that the medical officer in the Kenmare workhouse (workhouse’s were the name given to feeding stations set up by the English to feed the starving during the Irish potato famine)  described the workhouse as “an engine for producing disease and death”. Find it on the map..