Children's burial ground, Lomanagh, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Lomanagh, Co. Kerry

On a broad ridge above the east bank of the Sneem river, in rough uncultivated land on the Iveragh Peninsula, a small enclosure holds rows of diminutive grave-markers no taller than a forearm's length.

This is a calluragh, a type of informal burial ground used for unbaptised infants and others considered ineligible for consecrated ground under Catholic practice. Such sites are found across Ireland, often in marginal or liminal landscape, and carry a particular kind of quiet weight. The Ordnance Survey Name Books recorded this one specifically as a burial place for children, and by the late nineteenth century it had fallen out of use entirely.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 16.5 metres north to south and 14.5 metres east to west, and is enclosed by a low stone wall built from flat slabs laid in random courses. The wall survives to an average height of around sixty centimetres and is best preserved along its western and northern stretch, where a gap just over a metre wide marks what was likely the original entrance. Inside, the grave-markers are densely packed in rows running mostly north to south, with one row deviating to a northwest to southeast alignment. Oak, holly, and furze grow within and around the site, and the ground drops away steeply to the south and west, giving the enclosure a sense of seclusion from the surrounding land. Local tradition holds that a sundial stands somewhere near the site, though it has never been confirmed by survey.

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