Tea Lane Graveyard

Tea Lane Graveyard (Irish: Reilig Lána an Tae) is a Christian cemetery located in Celbridge, Ireland.^[1][2][3][4]

Tea Lane Graveyard
Conolly chapel
Details
Established	7th century AD
Location	Church Road, Celbridge, County Kildare
Country	Ireland
Coordinates	53.338772°N 6.546788°W / 53.338772; -6.546788
Type	Christian
Style	Rural cemetery
Owned by	Glasnevin Trust
Size	3,140 m2 (0.775 acre)
No. of graves	19,400
Website	tealanegraveyard.com
Find a Grave	Tea Lane Graveyard

History

The site is located 500 m northwest of the River Liffey and is the reputed burial site of Saint Mochua of Timahoe (died 657). Mochua built a wooden church on the site and was the first abbot of Clondalkin. It stood on the Slighe Mhor, an ancient roadway which ran from Dublin to Galway.^[5]

The Normans handed over control of St Mochua's church to the Abbey Church of Saint Thomas the Martyr, Dublin in 1215; the abbey supplied Celbridge with its priests. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey was suppressed and came into the possession of the Anglican Church of Ireland.^[6]

The present church building was built c. 1860, incorporating material from the medieval church (c. 1600).^[7]

The placename dates to the 19th century, when many English workers were brought over to work at Celbridge mill; the locals noted the large amounts of tea they drank, and the tealeaves that they threw into the roadway,^[8] and Church Lane was nicknamed "Tea Lane."^[9]

Gallery

• 
  Mortuary chapel
• 
  Ruined medieval church, with tracery fragment visible in the windowframe

Notable burials

Memorial plaque to Vol. Michael Heffernan

• Katherine Conolly (1662–1752), wife of William Conolly
• Lady Louisa Conolly (1743–1821), one of the famous Lennox Sisters
• William Conolly (1662–1729), Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and builder of Castletown House
• Many of the Dongan family^[10]
• Henry Grattan (junior) (1789–1859), Whig Member of Parliament
• Vol. Michael Heffernan (1889–1954); member of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Republican Army and fought in the 1916 Easter Rising, Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War (on the anti-Treaty side)^[11][12]
• Saint Mochua of Timahoe (d. 657)^[13]
• Air Mechanic, Second Class C.J. Sheridan, Royal Air Force (1900–1921); the only World War soldier in Tea Lane^[14]