Burial ground, Lughil, Co. Kildare

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Lughil, Co. Kildare

Somewhere in the tillage fields of Lughil in County Kildare, a small rectangular patch of ground resists cultivation. Roughly twenty metres long and ten metres wide, it sits on a low ridge running northeast to southwest, and where the surrounding land is worked and open, this plot is a tangle of hazel, elder, and thorn. The dead and decaying vegetation underfoot suggests the growth has been left undisturbed for a long time, the kind of quiet neglect that often marks ground people have been reluctant to turn over.

A plain headstone was recorded here in 1986, but by the time later observers looked, it had disappeared beneath the undergrowth. It is almost certainly still there, swallowed rather than removed. The site carries no enclosing wall or ditch, which sets it apart from the more formally bounded burial grounds of the period; unenclosed plots like this are often associated with informal or vernacular burial traditions, including the interment of unbaptised children in what were known as cillíní, though nothing in what is known about Lughil confirms that specifically. What is clear is that the place has a character distinct from the land around it, holding its tangle of bushes and its probable headstone against the pressures of agriculture on all sides.

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Pete F
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