Burial ground, Rockfield, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Burial Grounds
At Rockfield in County Kerry, there is a burial ground old enough to have been formally recorded as an archaeological monument, yet quiet enough that almost nothing about it has reached the public record.
It sits in that particular category of Irish site that is acknowledged to exist, assigned a classification, and then left to its surroundings without further elaboration. Kerry has no shortage of ancient burial grounds, from early medieval enclosures attached to ruined chapels to prehistoric cist graves tucked into farmland, and Rockfield's example belongs somewhere in that long continuum, its precise character and date as yet unpublished.
Burial grounds of this kind in Kerry can range enormously in origin and form. Some are cilliní, informal and often unmarked plots used historically for the interment of unbaptised children, positioned at the edges of parishes or on old boundaries. Others preserve the outline of an early Christian enclosure, a roughly circular raised area where a small community once buried its dead close to a church or oratory that has since vanished entirely. Without more detailed information in the accessible record, Rockfield's ground holds its history close, recognisable as significant but not yet fully explained.
