Burial ground, Kilcaskin, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Grounds
A small enclosure in the middle of a County Limerick townland has spent the better part of two centuries confusing the people who look at it.
Locally it is remembered as a graveyard, yet nobody alive can recall a burial taking place there. The ground gives up little in the way of confirmation: a scattering of rough stones poke through the turf, a low bank survives on one side, and the whole thing reads more convincingly as a small rectangular fort than as a place of the dead.
The site sits roughly at the centre of the townland of Kilcaskin, within the parish of Fedamore. When the Ordnance Survey recorded it in 1840, the note was already elegiac: burials had ceased, though a large ash tree on the west side was said to be visible from a great distance. By 1942 and 1943, when the archaeologist O'Kelly examined the enclosure, even that landmark may have gone, and the structural evidence had become harder to read. The enclosure measures approximately 24 metres east to west by 21 metres north to south, and while the south side retains a slight bank, faced externally with boulders of which only a few remain in place, along with a densely overgrown fosse (a shallow ditch, typically used to define or defend an enclosure), the north and west sides show nothing of the kind. O'Kelly raised the possibility that it may have been a killeen, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used historically for unbaptised infants and others excluded from formal church burial, which would explain both the local memory of interment and the absence of any official record. The outline of the enclosure remains visible on aerial photography today.
The site does not advertise itself. There is no signage, and the enclosure blends easily into the surrounding farmland. Visitors with an interest in early burial and enclosure archaeology will find the aerial imagery useful preparation before arriving, as the ground-level view offers little drama. The south bank and its remaining boulders are the most legible feature on the ground. The surrounding turf, with its irregular stones, rewards a slow walk if conditions are dry.