Forthill Graveyard

A Galway City cemetery with a unique story

It is frequently said that unless one had relatives interred in Forthill Cemetery in Lough Atalia, they cannot claim to be a true “old Galwegian” or “auld shtock.” It is most likely Galway’s oldest cemetery. Since 1500, the Augustinians have been connected to it. At the request of Friar Richard Nagle, Margaret Athy built an early Augustinian Friary close to the seashore where Forthill Cemetery now stands near Lough Atalia. This cemetery has been the scene of violence, grief, and painful silence for more than 520 years since it was built.

The unusual history of Forthill Graveyard

Saint Augustine’s Hill, now Forthill Cemetary was the location where in 1589 Sir William Fitzwilliam, decrying the leniency of the city, ordered over 300 men from the Spanish Armada to be put to death, by beheading. Fitzwilliam perpetrated these murders as a result of not finding gold or silver in possession of the sailors. Later in 1602 a fort was built here, after a calamitous defeat of the Irish & Spanish forces at the Battle of Kinsale under orders from Queen Elizabeth I. The purpose of the fort was to protect the town and its harbour while also dominating its citizens. The fort was dismantled by the townspeople in 1643 for fear of reprisals on the largely Catholic and pro-Royalist townspeople by the Protestant and pro-Parliamentarian commander of the garrison. Having been originally been used by the Augustinians the local Catholic population regarded the site as sacred and gradually began to use it as a place of burial in the 18th century. Today a plaque set in the east boundary wall commemorates the greatest act of mass murder in Galway’s history. Erected in 1988 by members of the La Orden Del Tercio Viejo Del Mar Oceano, the oldest marine corps in the world, the memorial is only written in the Irish and Spanish language as an intended snub to the language of the perpetrator.

One of the world’s most interesting graveyards

Forthill Cemetary Spanish ‘Chic’ magazine
In 2022, The Spanish ‘Chic’ magazine named Forthill Cemetery in Lough Atalia, Co. Galway, one of the best 20 cemeteries in the world, ranking it alongside Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where famous people like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried. Although the mass killings of over 300 men from the Spanish Armada occurred more than 400 years ago, a commemorative plaque, — the sole tangible proof that such a slaughter occurred was only recently put in place. The only physical reminder of them that exists now is a stone plaque that was put in place a few decades ago.