Children's burial ground, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Burial Grounds
In a quiet valley on the Dingle Peninsula, tucked between the western spurs of Brandon Peak and Ballysitteragh mountain, lies a circular enclosure whose interior is given over almost entirely to the graves of children.
This is a calluragh, a type of unconsecrated burial ground used in Ireland from early Christian times well into the nineteenth century for infants who died before baptism. Church law denied such children burial in consecrated ground, and so communities maintained these separate, often ancient, enclosures at the margins of settled land. The one at Na Gleannta Thuaidh sits on the southern side of a sheltered valley, modest and unannounced, its purpose legible only if you know what you are looking at.
The enclosure measures roughly 34 metres east to west and just over 31 metres north to south internally, and its perimeter wall, though now largely collapsed to a low band of rubble, still reads clearly enough as a boundary. The inner and outer faces of the wall show only in patches; in the northern sector a modern field wall has been built along the top of it. Access is through a gap at the east-south-east, flanked by two large upright slabs, each around 1.25 metres high and set at right angles to one another, giving the entrance a deliberate, almost formal character. Within, the foundations of three huts can still be traced, though most of the interior is occupied by low grave mounds, the majority running between 1.25 and 1.5 metres in length and roughly half a metre high, many of them marked at their eastern and western ends by small upright stones. Two cross-slabs are associated with the site: one lies loose on a grave inside the enclosure, and a second stands upright on a cairn of stones about ten metres to the east. The site was recorded in detail by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which documented its use continuing until the nineteenth century.
A laneway runs along the western edge of the enclosure, which makes the site relatively approachable on foot. The grave mounds are low and easily missed at certain times of year when vegetation is thick, but the flanking entrance stones are a reliable marker once you are close enough to see them.