Children's burial ground, Inse Fhearann Na Gcléireach, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Inse Fhearann Na Gcléireach, Co. Kerry

On the southern side of the Glenmore valley in County Kerry, looking out over Isknagahiny Lough, lies a small, unenclosed burial ground with no walls to mark its boundary and no inscribed names to identify who lies beneath.

What defines it instead is a dense spread of stones, a loose line of boulders along its northern edge, a fringe of holly trees, and a scattering of small upright quartz slabs, none of them bearing any text or decoration. These are the markers of a ceallúnach, a term for an informal burial ground, often used for unbaptised infants, that existed outside the bounds of consecrated parish cemeteries. Such places were quietly maintained across rural Ireland for centuries, their locations passed on by memory rather than by any official record.

The site measures roughly 12 metres north to south and 15 metres east to west, modest in extent but clearly used over a long period. Standing at its centre is a slab 1.58 metres tall, pointed at the top, and carved on both faces. The western face carries a neatly cut Latin cross with square terminals rising from a triangular base, with a small square inset at the point where the arms meet the shaft. The opposite face bears a simpler equal-armed linear cross, 0.7 metres in height. The quality of the carving sets this slab apart from the otherwise unmarked stones around it, though its date and the identity of whoever commissioned or carved it are not recorded. The site was also, at some point before the mid-nineteenth century, a place of popular devotion, visited specifically on Good Friday, which suggests it held a significance beyond its function as a burial place for those excluded from the churchyard.

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