Cross-inscribed pillar (present location), Aghatubrid, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Crosses & Monuments
In a field boundary in Aghatubrid, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a large carved stone lies face down in the earth.
It has not stood upright for some time, and the holy well it once marked no longer exists either, filled in during the 1940s and now leaving no trace at the surface. The stone and the well together formed part of a small sacred landscape, and both have quietly vanished from view.
The slab measures 2.18 metres long and up to half a metre wide, and bears an equal-armed linear cross near one end, the kind of early Christian incised cross found across Ireland at sites associated with pilgrimage, prayer, and the veneration of water sources. Holy wells were typically local focal points for devotion, often linked to a patron saint or a nearby ecclesiastical site, and this one lay roughly 270 metres east of the Kilpeacan ecclesiastical site. Local knowledge places the slab as formerly standing close to the well itself, suggesting it served as a marker or boundary stone for that act of worship. At some point it fell, or was laid down, and ended up face-first against a field boundary about 20 metres to the north of where the well once was. The Kilpeacan connection roots this modest pillar in a broader early Christian presence in the area, though the precise date of the carving is not recorded.