Have you ever wandered into a graveyard and thought of the lives those buried led and if they were still here, the stories they could tell?
Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin is Ireland's largest burial site and is the resting place for 1.5 million Irish souls, including 702,000 women.
Schools and history books often touch on the famous names who frequent this space but there are a handful of women whose stories sometimes slip through the cracks.
EVOKE spoke with Grainne Nolan, a tour guide at the cemetery who, along with her team are ready to bring you down through the paths of history with some very interesting stories, many that people have forgotten.
Here are the stories of just three of the interesting women buried at Glasnevin Cemetery...
Maria Higgins
Maria Higgins is a lady who 'died' twice. Maria stood to inherit £500 from an aunt but the money would only be released after her death for the benefit of her children. Maria and her husband had no children so after her death, the money would pass to Charles.
After bribing a doctor to sign a death cert her husband and brother staged an entire funeral and as Grainne tells us "a coffin was brought out and on the breastplate, it read Mrs Maria Higgins age 54 years, died 29 July 1854."
Little did people know she was hiding in their basement and would stay there for two years until she had enough of hiding. Walking into a solicitor she exposed the plot resulting in those who helped the couple going to jail. In 1871, Maria was officially buried at 71 close to where she had been "placed" the first time!
Anne Devlin
A true employee of the rebel leader Robert Emmet, Anne Devlin endured torture and confinement for three years, refusing to give any information about him during the rebellion.
Living in rat-invested conditions, where disease was ripe in Kilmainham Gaol, she was finally released in 1806 and would live in poverty until she died in 1851.
Taking the secrets of her employer to the grave, she was buried in an unmarked plot but later moved to a different resting place with a headstone.
Maura Laverty
Moving a few decades forward, Maura Laverty was a household name who had her own cookbook.
Born in Rathangan, Co Kildare in 1907, she studied teacher training at the Brigidine Convent, Carlow, before moving to Spain at age 17 to work as a governess to the young Princess Bibesco. Fluent in Spanish she took up a position as foreign correspondent in Madrid.
After returning to Ireland, she would go on to work as a journalist and broadcaster at RTÉ and wrote novels, two of which were banned by the Irish government - one for its frankness about the female body, and one for its unflattering and realistic depiction of Dublin tenements at the time.
Before she died in 1966 she wrote the first soap on RTÉ called "Tolka Row" which ran during the sixties and was hugely successful for the TV station.
Glasnevin Cemetery is filled with interesting stories about those who have made an impact on our lives and, in many cases, given women a voice.
For Grainne and the team she says, "If they're [visitors] moved in any way, whether it be emotional or laughter or indeed, badness, that's what we always hope for.
"The key to a successful tour is that the visitor learns something new, is reminded of something they already knew, and hears something that makes them laugh and something that makes them cry."
Why not try something different by checking out The Dead Interesting Tour, which highlights the interesting figures that are buried within the grounds?
Or if you want to discover more stories about Irish women check out the Women in History Tour. You never know what you might discover!
*This article was originally published on Evoke.ie.
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