Burial Ground, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry

The enclosure, roughly 22 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, is what remains of a ceallúnach, a type of informal burial ground, often of early medieval origin, used for unbaptised infants, strangers, or others considered ineligible for consecrated ground. Its entrance, on the north-east side, is still marked by two upright stone slabs. The site looks out over the Portmagee Channel, though the drama of its setting is somewhat at odds with how quietly it is falling back into the hillside.

Within the enclosure, the archaeology becomes more layered than a simple burial ground might suggest. Close to the western bank, the foundations of a small circular hut survive, though only the western half remains visible, with walls around 1.3 metres thick and an interior of just 3 metres in diameter, now filled with loose stone. Two upright stones immediately to the south may be grave-markers, or may relate to the hut itself. Near the eastern edge of the site, the fragmentary foundations of a small rectangular building were interpreted by the scholar Françoise Henry, writing in 1957, as a possible oratory, a modest early Christian chapel. Its entrance gap on the west side is just 0.7 metres wide. On the north side of this structure lies a possible leacht, a low cairn-like monument associated with early Christian veneration, consisting of a raised stony mound with protruding slabs, and beside it a five-metre row of upright slabs running north to south. The site appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map as a circular enclosure, but by the second edition it had been recorded as sub-rectangular, suggesting the boundaries had already begun to blur.