gallery graves tyrone

This area is rich in sites that stretch much further back into history, back to the beginnings of Christianity in Ireland, and back still further to the time of the Celts. Ardstraw Graveyard is all that remains of the church founded by St Eoghan in the 6th Century which remained the seat of the local bishop until the 12th century, when it came under the power of the bishop of Derry....

This is a rare instance of a cemetery reserved exclusively for the burial of women, as its Irish name indicates. It is a small, almost square, enclosure with raised centre in which a number of low stones presumably mark old graves. Traditionally, no dead man or living woman was meant to enter the enclosure, but how old that tradition is, or what its origin was, we do not know....