Ecclesiastical enclosure, Baslickane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Baslickane, Co. Kerry

On the western bank of the Finglas river in south Kerry, overlooking Ballinskelligs Bay, a roughly circular arrangement of boulders and small stones marks out a space that was once, in some form, sacred.

The enclosure is overgrown now, its interior occupied by a dense field of uninscribed grave-markers, none of them much above knee height, pressing close together across a sixteen-metre-square burial area. There are no names on any of them. Whoever lies here left no legible record of themselves, only the stones.

The enclosure itself is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 26 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west internally, a scale consistent with early Irish ecclesiastical sites of the kind that once dotted the Iveragh Peninsula. Early Christian communities typically enclosed their churches, burial grounds, and associated buildings within a roughly circular boundary, known as a cashel or enclosure, which defined the sacred precinct from the surrounding landscape. At the north-east, abutting the outer face of the enclosure wall and sitting about 65 centimetres below the level of the interior, are the remains of a small rectangular structure. Its internal dimensions, approximately 5.35 metres by 2.85 metres, are consistent with an oratory, a term for the small, often single-roomed prayer buildings used by early Christian communities. The walls are of drystone construction, meaning no mortar, just carefully laid stone, and they survive only one or two courses high. The western end of the building merges directly into the enclosure boundary, suggesting both were conceived as part of the same complex. No entrance to either the building or the enclosure is visible.

Near the eastern edge of the site stands a broken stone cross, roughly 1.34 metres high and 37 centimetres wide at the base. Only the eastern arm survives. It is a rough piece of work, unpolished and fractured, keeping company with grave-markers that tell nothing about the people beneath them. The whole site faces west towards the bay, which on a clear day would have been the last thing visible before the horizon dropped into the Atlantic.

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Pete F
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