Ongoing maintenance work and access at historic Offaly graveyard

Contrary to a previous report, the Midland Tribune has since learned that there is in fact access to the historic graveyard at Birr Workhouse.
Speaking to the Tribune, Amanda Pedlow, Offaly Heritage Officer, said that while there is no access from the Syngefield side, the public can access the site from the Scurragh side.
She said the historic graveyard is also being well looked after on an ongoing basis. “There is a maintenance programme for the graveyard in partnership with Birr Tidy Towns. The graveyard is being managed as a wildflower meadow at the site and a path is mown around the edges to allow for people to walk the site. Because of this ongoing maintenance, because of the wonderful work of Birr Tidy Towns, the site is a green lung, and is being managed under the guidance of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and is a great example of biodiversity in an urban setting.”
Amanda added that the graveyard is in the ownership of the County Council.
Castle Rook own the workhouse and want to turn the workhouse into a care home for those suffering with dementia.
Castle Rook bought the building in 2018 and said its first task was to restore the roofs which are in a very bad condition.
In 2019 the company erected a new gate at the Syngefield entrance. The gate has remained locked ever since but sadly no building work has yet started.
Last week the company told the Midland Tribune that it's still intent on carrying out restoration work and creating a dementia care home.
The workhouse in Birr opened in 1842 and closed in 1921 (Birr was called Parsonstown at the time). Historian Stephen Callaghan said the opening date for the graveyard is unclear "and there are no records of internments.” The inmates were definitely buried there. “It is likely,” said Stephen, “that thousands of people were interred there." Former Birr librarian Violet Doolin had a cross erected on the site of the burial ground which acknowledges its former use.
Another historian, in a book about the Famine, pointed out that according to records kept by those running the Workhouse the weekly death rate in the building in April 1847 reached 67 people per thousand. In February 1848, 46 people per thousand people, per week, were dying in the building. In early May 1849 there were 3,007 inmates in the building. In the weekend ending May 19, 1849 101 inmates per thousand died. In other words, 303 people died in one week in the workhouse in May 1849. It's likely that the internments of these suffering people took place in mass graves when they were buried beside the workhouse.
According to Andrés Eiríksson, writing for the RTE / UCC Great Irish Famine Project, the main cause of death in Parsonstown workhouse during the Famine was ‘fever’, including both typhus and relapsing fever (795), marasmus (748) and ‘dysentery and diarrhoea’ (625). “A total of 3,645 deaths were recorded,” he wrote, “most of them in 1847-49. There were three critical periods of high death toll: (1) the first half of 1847, (2) January to April 1848, and (3) December 1848 to July 1849.”
This terrible suffering, this terrible period in Birr's history, still strikes a deeply emotional chord for many people in the area.
Last August a beautiful art project called “The Meadow” was performed at the graveyard site. "The Meadow" was a site-specific sound installation created as an Offaly Drama Project for the Workhouse.
Through a musical setting of historical information and records The Meadow sought to "give voice to the thousands of lives lost in the workhouse during the Great Famine of 1845-1852."
It was conceived by Fiona Breen in collaboration with composer Tom Lane and historian Margaret Hogan. The event included music, readings and stories.