Ecclesiastical enclosure, Aghatubrid, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ecclesiastical Sites
On a south-facing spur of Poilelogh mountain in County Kerry, a walled enclosure looks out across the land towards Ballinskelligs Bay.
Its Irish name, Cill Pheacáin, marks it as a cill, an early ecclesiastical site, and inside its boundaries the ground holds a remarkable density of early Christian material: a pillar stone, a leacht (a small cairn-like devotional monument, often associated with prayer stations at early monastic sites), a cross-inscribed pillar, a possible gable-shrine, two rectangular house sites, and numerous low grave-markers pressing up through the grass.
The enclosure itself is subrectangular, measuring 56 metres east to west and 37 metres north to south, sloping noticeably downhill towards the south. Its boundary wall, averaging 1.2 metres high and about a metre wide, is built from large stone slabs at its lower courses, and at the southern edge it runs along the top of a low, near-vertical rock-face, using the natural landscape as part of its structure. Traces of drystone facing survive along part of the inner northern face. The entrance, set midway along the eastern wall, was originally around two metres wide and is framed near its inner end by two standing jamb stones of 1.2 and 1.3 metres respectively, set at right angles to the passage sides. Much of the wall appears to have been modified in more recent times, and modern field walls now abut the enclosure at both north and south, while drain spoil has accumulated against its northeastern and eastern edges, blurring the boundary between ancient fabric and later agricultural use.