Burial, Killinure, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Sites
Around 1990, a landowner ploughing a field on a south-east-facing slope in Killinure, County Tipperary, turned up a quantity of small bones.
Rather than continue working the ground, he stopped and left the field under grass. It has remained that way since. The decision was practical and respectful in equal measure, and it drew a quiet line around what was already, in all likelihood, a place of considerable antiquity.
The bones are thought to be human burials connected to an early church recorded at this location by the antiquarian Patrick Power in 1908. The site sits just off the crest of a hill in rolling pasture, and it appears to lie within a large ecclesiastical enclosure, a type of boundary, often curvilinear, that would have defined the precinct of an early Irish monastic or church settlement. Such enclosures are a characteristic feature of early medieval religious sites in Ireland, and their scale can sometimes indicate the relative importance of the foundation they once contained. The combination of a probable enclosure, a documented church site, and what appear to be associated burials suggests a layered history of use stretching back well before any written record of the place.

