St. Finbarr's Cemetery

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St. Finbarr's Cemetery in Cork, Ireland, is the city's largest and oldest cemetery still in use. Located on the Glasheen Road, it was first opened in the mid 19th century.

Many of the early burials were of the wealthy citizens of the city. Unlike older cemeteries, St. Finbarr's was professionally laid out with numbered pathways and wide avenues.

[edit] Famous personalities

Among those buried at St. Finbarr's Cemetery are former Taoiseach Jack Lynch; the antiquarian Richard Rolt Brash who was among the first to decipher writing in the ancient Ogham writing style; the composer Arnold Bax, sculptor Seamus Murphy and Cork's first Lord Mayor Daniel Hegarty.

St. Finbarr's contains one of the largest burial plots of Irish Republicans who died in the course of the struggle for Irish freedom, most of them during the 1920s, but some of more recent vintage including members of the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. This is known as the Cork Republican Plot and among those buried there are former Lords Mayor of Cork Terence McSwiney and Tomás Mac Curtain, hunger striker Joseph Murphy. Other republicans who are buried at St. Finbarr's but not in the republican plot include Flying Column leader Tom Barry, former government minister James J. Walsh and Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan.

Annual Easter Commemorations, remembering the 1916 Rising in Ireland are held at the Republican Plot on Easter Sunday by various groups and parties including Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, the Workers Party of Ireland and Republican Sinn Féin.