Burial ground, Kilcolman, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Kilcolman, Co. Kerry

In a gently sloping pastoral field in north Kerry, a low earthen bank traces an almost perfect circle in the grass, enclosing a space that Ordnance Survey cartographers in the 1840s had no hesitation in calling an old burial ground.

By 1914, their successors were describing it as disused. The enclosure itself, roughly 42 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west on the inside, is the kind of site that registers as a slight rise in the land rather than anything obviously archaeological, yet its dimensions and form are quietly significant.

The bank, which ranges from three to four and a half metres wide at its base and rises to about a metre in height on its outer face, defines what would once have been a consecrated or at least ritually bounded space. A fosse, the term for a shallow external ditch associated with early enclosures of this kind, survives as a faint depression on the northern and western sides, roughly a metre across and about forty centimetres deep. Circular burial enclosures of this type are a familiar presence in the Irish landscape and are often associated with early medieval ecclesiastical sites, though in many cases the original dedication and community they served have long since been forgotten. The townland name Kilcolman preserves the Irish cill, meaning church or monastic cell, combined with the personal name Colmán, suggesting that some form of early Christian foundation once operated in this vicinity, even if no structural remains of it have been identified above ground.

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