Children's burial ground, Dungeel, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Dungeel, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing pasture slope above the valley of the Laune River in County Kerry, a farm trackway cuts quietly through what was once a place of considerable grief.

The ground it crosses is a ceallúnach, a term for the unofficial burial places used across Ireland for stillborn infants and unbaptised children, those whom Catholic doctrine long excluded from consecrated ground. The practice, carried out at night to avoid attention or stigma, left behind not headstones or inscriptions but low, kerbed mounds barely distinguishable from the surrounding pasture.

The site at Dungeel is roughly rectangular, measuring around 26 metres east to west and 15 metres north to south, and it appears on the 1895 Ordnance Survey six-inch map marked by a dotted line, the cartographic convention used to indicate something present but uncertain, informal, or unverified. The ruined walls of Dungeel Church sit immediately inside the northern boundary of the same enclosure, and a low scarp, still intermittently visible on the southern and western edges, traces the outline of the original boundary. Immediately south of the farm trackway, three roughly D-shaped raised areas survive, defined by kerbing and slight changes in ground level, the largest stretching about seven metres east to west. A smaller kerbed area abuts the south wall of the church itself. According to Dennehy, writing in 1997, these raised sections are believed to represent the ceallúnach proper, last used approximately forty years before that date, which would place its final use sometime in the 1950s.

What the ground holds is largely invisible to a casual eye. The raised areas are subtle, the kerbing worn, and the trackway now bisects the space as though the land had simply moved on. That ordinariness is, in its own way, the point. These were burials conducted without ceremony, without daylight, and without the permission of the Church, carried out by families who had nowhere else to bring their dead.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Children’s burial ground, Dungeel, Co. Kerry. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement