I have visited the old graveyard in Maynooth College an number of times and for the first time a few years ago I noticed a wooden cross in the woods beside the outer wall of the graveyard. I was interested because if this cross was a burial-marker it would indicate that for some reason a person was not permitted to be buried in a consecrated graveyard [there are many possible reasons which I will not discuss here … see link below].

Back then I asked a number of people about this cross and anyone that was aware of it did not know its history, one person suggested that it might be a pet’s grave but that some people believed that it marked the grave of a person who committed suicide. There is now [7 May 2018] and extra wooden cross so there is no real reason to believe that they are anything other than pet grave markers.

I came across the following story: “If you visit Maynooth today, you might come across an old building on the campus called Rhetoric House. You might notice that one of the windows on the top floor is boarded-up and you might wonder why. If you ask someone, they will tell you this is The Ghost Room. Many years ago, students who went to Maynooth would live on the top floor of the building. There was one young man who was assigned to sleep in Room No.2. One day, when he didn’t show up for lectures, his friends went looking for him. They found his dead body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of Room No.2 with his throat slit from ear to ear. Clutched in his hand was a bloody razor and it appeared that he had taken his own life. Ireland was a Catholic country and, at the time, suicide was seen as a terrible sin. The matter was hushed up by the college and the student was buried in an unconsecrated part of the college cemetery, away from the other graves.”

As you may have guessed, according to local legend, this story repeated the next year [according to the official records the deaths were nineteen years apart]. Some locals claim, that three people died in a similar manner but while the official records indicate that two students are buried in unmarked graves within the walls of the graveyard there is no mention of a third student so it is claimed be a few that the wooden cross marks the grave of the third victim.

The wooden crosses in my photographs do certainly not mark the last resting place of the third student [I just ruined a good story].

www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/they-buried-our-...