Cross, Coarha Beg, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Crosses & Monuments
On a low rock-knoll rising out of Emlagh Bog on Valentia Island, a rough stone cross stands fixed in cement at the highest point of a small sacred enclosure, facing east across the bog while the Atlantic sits barely 400 metres to the north.
The cross is not elegant. Its shaft is wide and blunt, its arms rudimentary, and the whole thing has the look of something made by someone working with deep conviction but without a mason's training. That quality, the slightly awkward solemnity of it, is precisely what makes it worth pausing over.
The cross belongs to a cluster of early Christian features known collectively as the Well of St Brendan's Anointing, a site that includes a holy well, a cross-slab, and two further stone crosses, along with miscellaneous features including a possible leacht, which is a low cairn-like structure associated with prayer stations and penitential circuits. The cross itself stands 1.4 metres high, with a shaft measuring up to 0.57 metres across and arms spanning 0.76 metres. On its eastern face, a Latin cross has been incised into the stone in a rough, linear manner. The dedication to St Brendan, the sixth-century Kerry-born navigator and monastic founder venerated across much of the early Irish church, gives the site a connection to one of the most widely travelled saints in the early medieval tradition, though what specific devotional practices took place here is not fully known. The site's position on the bog, away from any obvious settlement, suggests it functioned as a place apart, reached deliberately and on foot.