Children's burial ground, Termons, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Termons, Co. Kerry

On the south-east slope of a ridge above Lough Currane in Co. Kerry, an overgrown enclosure holds a quiet and somewhat tangled history.

The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map records a circular enclosure at this spot, with the accompanying name book describing it plainly as an earthen fort and burial ground for children. Places of this kind, known in Irish as cillíní, were used across Ireland for the interment of unbaptised infants and others who could not receive formal church burial. They were often located at the margins of parish life, sometimes within or near the remains of older, pre-Christian earthworks, and this site follows that pattern closely.

The enclosure itself is oval rather than strictly circular, measuring roughly 27 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west, with a ruined rampart and a possible entrance on the eastern side marked by two upright stone slabs. Built into the southern part of the enclosing bank are the foundations of a small circular hut, just 3.35 metres in internal diameter. Inside the enclosure a stone-built platform, trapezoidal in plan and entered through two erect slabs, once held a carved stone slab some 0.9 metres high. The east face of this slab bore a linear Latin cross with a bar terminal near the top of the shaft; the west face carried a more worn cross that may have incorporated a reversed chi-rho monogram, an early Christian symbol formed from the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek. The slab cannot now be located. The antiquarian John Windele noted the stone when he visited in 1848, and also recorded that religious stations were performed at the site during Easter, suggesting it retained some devotional significance well into the nineteenth century.

The present remains are heavily disturbed and difficult to read on the ground. A modern field boundary cuts through the northern sector of the enclosure, and the whole site lies beneath dense overgrowth and trees. What survives is fragmentary, but the layering here is considerable: an earthwork that may pre-date Christianity, reused as a burial ground for children beyond the reach of consecrated ground, furnished at some point with an inscribed stone, and still drawing Easter pilgrims as recently as the mid-nineteenth century.

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