An evocative reminder of the famine era workhouses, the Workhouse Attic Memorial is part of the St George’s Heritage and Visitor Centre and can be reached by following the brass plaque trail.
In December 1864, at the height of the Great Famine, the Board of Guardians of Carrick-on-Shannon Workhouse directed the Master to appropriate the north corner of the Workhouse grounds for the burial of the dead. The taking of this decision was as a result of a complaint from the Rev. William Percy of the Parish of Kiltoghert relative to the improper internment of deceased paupers in the Parish churchyard. The site of that burial ground in which hundreds of the victims of the Famine, many of them children, is at the rear of what is now St Patrick’s Hospital.
