Cave, Castlekevin, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Caves & Shelters
In the townland of Castlekevin in County Cork, a cave holds the fragmentary remains of at least one person, and almost nobody knows it was ever investigated.
Three bones, fragments of a cranium, a humerus, and a metacarpal, representing a single adult, were removed from the site and are now held in the National Museum of Ireland. Beyond that, the record goes quiet.
On 27 August 1934, a team that had been excavating the Killavullen caves at Ballymacmoy turned their attention to what their notes described as "Killura cave," placing it approximately two and a half kilometres north-west of Killavullen in County Cork. The problem is that no cave appears on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps for Killuragh townland, which is the area that name most closely matches. What does appear, on the first edition of sheet 25, is a cave marked in the neighbouring townland of Castlekevin, sitting roughly eighty metres north of the Killuragh boundary. The most plausible explanation is a simple clerical error: the investigators recorded the wrong townland name, and the cave they actually entered was the one in Castlekevin. No written account of what they found or how they worked survives. The three bones were catalogued and deposited with the National Museum, and that is where the paper trail ends. Whether the remains are prehistoric, medieval, or more recent cannot be determined from what has been preserved.