Ecclesiastical site, Shronahiree More, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ecclesiastical Sites
At the mouth of the Cloon valley in south Kerry, where the ground levels out near the Owenroe river, a small rectangular graveyard holds considerably more history than its modest appearance suggests.
Within it lie the foundations of a church, three cross-inscribed slabs, and a bullaun stone, a basin-like hollow worn or carved into a larger rock, historically associated with early Christian ritual use. A low, L-shaped earthen scarp, no more than forty centimetres high, curves around the north and west sides of the church remains, possibly tracing the outer boundary of the original ecclesiastical enclosure.
The site carries at least three recorded names, a detail that hints at the layered and sometimes competing ways in which places were documented across different periods and languages. The Ordnance Survey Name Books recorded it variously as Killeennamoyle, or Cillín na Maoile, alongside Inehorve, which corresponds to Inse Rua, and Kilnomeel. What is particularly striking is that the site appears in Papal Letters from both 1482 and 1485, where it is described as a vicarage. That reference places this quiet valley-mouth firmly within the administrative structures of the late medieval Church, connected, however tenuously, to correspondence reaching Rome. The graveyard itself is known as Inse Rua, and it is within those boundaries that the ecclesiastical remains survive.