On 8 March 2015, members and friends of the Drumraney Heritage Society gathered at the local Community Hall to celebrate our website launch.

The guest speaker for the event was Fr Jimmy Murray O’Carm., a noted historian of the nearby Rosemount area. In a wide-ranging and thoughtful address, Fr Jimmy sought to situate key aspects of our parish history in appropriate local and national contexts. He reflected in particular on the significance of old graveyards, a matter that has been central to the Society’s activities. We are especially grateful to Fr Jimmy for travelling from Dublin to launch our website.

Lissanode native Sheila O’Donnell also provided an overview of some online sources and resources for researching genealogy and family history. Sheila’s ongoing role in the Member Services team at Ancestry.com has allowed her to become quite the expert in this subject area. Her insights and advice proved very helpful.

Our website, (which was developed by Ashling Cunningham), is intended as a resource for gathering and publishing information on local heritage, as well as reporting on the projects undertaken by the Society. The main project to date has been the restoration of the Old Graveyard at Drumraney. Beginning in 2013, this task was undertaken by a large team of volunteers, in conjunction with Community Employment Scheme workers.

The website makes available transcriptions and photographs of some 200 gravestones in the Old Graveyard. These relate to families from across the Drumraney, Mount Temple, Ballymore, Tang and Rosemount district. Encompassing the period 1621 to 1975, the legible gravestones contain around 560 names, including 112 different surnames. There is a particular concentration of inscriptions dating from between the 1760s and the 1830s.