A Bolster headstone from Anhid, Limerick
As we work with community groups around the country one of our main aims to track the different stonecutters who have worked in Ireland. We record the carved grave memorials by geotagged photo and database record sheets always taking care to record the stonemason/cutter if they have signed their work.
We can now search the Historic Graves database for stonecutter/stonemason in the Names Search view https://historicgraves.com/graves-search.
Some Irish stonecutters can be traced in other historic documents,eg. search this Cork Archive directory for Stone Cutter (https://web.archive.org/web/20171121063029/http://corkarchives.ie/media/...) and note that many of the men live in Douglas street which matches the location for stonecutters premises we find in many historic graveyards around Cork city.
However, other stonecutters, some of them craftsmen and artists of the highest skills, cannot be otherwise found in the historic record. Joseph Bolster is one of my own favourites from County Limerick and North Cork. Internet searches have failed to find Joseph but some of this headstones are works of art. We have more Bolster headstones in the database but the data is still being entered. Hopefully we will have them all fully tagged in the months to come.
County Limerick stonecutters seem to have been particularly good about signing their work, usually with the prefix FECIT before their name. Here is a search for the Keanes of Ballysimon. Note their work is mostly found around the city but they also sold as far south as Kilbehenny.
