Burial ground, Caher By., Co. Cork

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Caher By., Co. Cork

In a field of pasture in Caher By.

, County Cork, a small circular enclosure sits quietly among the grass, its purpose legible only if you know what you are looking at. Grave markers and loose stones are scattered through its interior, and a low stone-faced earthen bank, still standing roughly 0.8 metres high, curves around part of its perimeter. The locals have their own name for it: "keel", a word derived from the Irish "cill", meaning a small early church or monastic cell, and used widely in the west of Ireland to denote ancient burial grounds that often predate any formal parish structure.

The site is nearly circular, measuring about 20.8 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, a shape that is characteristic of early medieval ecclesiastical enclosures in Ireland. These enclosures, sometimes surrounding a church that has long since vanished, were defined by their curved boundaries as much as by any building within them. Here, part of that boundary survives as the earthen bank, stone-faced on one side, while the remainder is absorbed into a field boundary that runs from the north-west around to the east-north-east. The grave markers within suggest the ground was used for burial over a considerable period, though no dates or names are attached to them in any surviving record.

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Pete F
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