Tralee Workhouse Burial Ground

Tralee Workhouse Burial Ground
Helen O'Carroll, Curator Kerry County Museum
The main burial ground for those who died during the Famine in Tralee Workhouse was the small cemetery opened in May 1846 in the north-east corner of the site and enclosed by the boundary walls. As the effects of the Famine began to take hold deaths in the Workhouse mounted and the graveyard was overwhelmed with the number of burials. In September 1847 the Poor Law Commissioners issued a circular instructing every workhouse in the country to bury the dead in separate locations, at a distance removed from their buildings. It has long been believed that it was then that God’s Acre in Ballybeggan was opened as the Workhouse cemetery. This talk will show, however, that the Ballybeggan site was opened as late as September 1853, after the Famine, and that burials continued at the Workhouse site possibly right up to 1851. It will discuss how many were buried at the Workhouse site, and in what manner they were buried, and how best to remember those who are interred here. This talk was first delivered in November 2020 to the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society.