Burial ground, Connahy, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Burial Grounds
A field in County Kilkenny carries a name that quietly preserves a memory nobody can quite verify.
Known locally as Shannovohaun, an anglicisation of the Irish for "old hut", this three-quarter-acre plot near the townland of Connahy contains a roughly square enclosure measuring some 53 yards across, defined by a rampart and fosse, the fosse being a defensive ditch dug around the outer edge of the raised bank. The field name suggests a settlement of some kind, the earthwork suggests something more formal, and the ground itself, whenever it has been turned over by the plough, has reportedly taken on all the appearance of a graveyard.
The historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905 in his survey of the diocese of Ossory, placed this enclosure about half a mile north-west of the local chapel and recorded the local tradition that it had once been the site of an ancient monastery. That claim has never been confirmed by excavation, but it is not an implausible one. Square or rectilinear enclosures of this general type are associated in Ireland with early ecclesiastical settlements, and the combination of a fosse, a raised interior, and disturbed burial evidence fits a pattern found elsewhere across the country. The field name itself points in a similar direction, old hut being one of those modest Irish placename elements that can, on closer inspection, mark the faded outline of a monastic cell or anchorite's dwelling.
The enclosure near St. Coleman's church, roughly a kilometre to its north-west, has been identified on satellite imagery and appears to correspond with what Carrigan described more than a century ago. The local name Shannovohaun is still in use, which is itself a small piece of continuity worth noting, a vernacular memory of something that formal history has largely passed over.