Children's burial ground, Reenard, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Reenard, Co. Kerry

On a low rise just back from the shore of Valentia Harbour, close to Reenard Point, lies an overgrown site that combines several distinct elements in a space roughly 29 metres by 50 metres: a children's burial ground, a leaning stone cross, and the foundations of what appear to be two or three conjoined stone huts.

The combination is quietly unsettling. Burial grounds of this kind, known in Irish tradition as cillíní, were used for the interment of unbaptised infants and others who, under Catholic doctrine, were excluded from consecrated ground. They are found across Ireland, often at liminal spots, beside water, on old boundaries, or near ancient earthworks, and Reenard fits that pattern almost precisely.

The burial area sits on a low mound in the south-eastern part of the site. Among the upright slabs, several of which stand in recognisably regular rows, quartz stones and pebbles have been placed, a detail seen at other cillíní and thought by some to carry older, pre-Christian associations with light and protection. At the western edge of the mound, inclining noticeably to one side, stands a narrow stone cross 1.4 metres high with small, rudimentary arms set below the midpoint of the shaft. Its proportions are severe and plain. Towards the north-western end of the site, near a natural rock outcrop, are the remains of two conjoined huts built in dry stone, that is, without mortar. The better-preserved northern hut has walls around 1.2 metres wide and an internal diameter of just over five metres, with its entrance facing north. The southern hut is less legible, its walls largely lost beneath turf, and an oval stony mound a short distance to the west may represent a third structure. A souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement and sometimes used for storage or refuge, was recorded near this spot by a source identified as Skinner, though no one locally appears to retain any memory of it.

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Pete F
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