Church, Cill Fhiontain, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Churches & Chapels
On the flat plain north of Dingle Harbour, on a peninsula better known for its dramatic coastline, sits a small early Christian enclosure that quietly accumulates the unusual.
The site known as Kilfountan, or Teampall Fionntain, is bounded by a roughly D-shaped or sub-oval enclosure containing the remains of an oratory, a rectangular hut, a bullaun stone (a boulder with one or more cup-shaped depressions, typically associated with early ecclesiastical sites and sometimes used for grinding or ritual purposes), and a cross-inscribed ogham stone. Ogham is an early medieval script, most commonly found in Ireland, in which letters are represented by notches and strokes cut along the edge of a stone. The combination of a cross-inscribed example with a bullaun stone on a single small site layers several centuries of early Christian practice into one compact space. A quernstone from the site, probably of Disc A type as identified by Caulfield in 1969, was removed at some point and is now held in the museum in Cork.
The oratory itself, tucked into the south-east sector of the enclosure, is tiny even by the modest standards of early Irish oratories, measuring roughly 3.75 metres by 3.15 metres internally. It was built using the corbel technique, in which stones are laid so that each course projects slightly inward over the one below, eventually meeting at the top without mortar. The north wall, the best preserved, still stands to 1.38 metres and is a substantial 1.8 metres thick. The west wall retains its doorway, just 0.7 metres wide, though the head of the opening is gone; a large flat stone lying inside may once have served as the lintel. The south, east, and west walls survive only in part. What is perhaps most affecting about the site is its persistent use: the enclosure functioned as a calluragh, a burial ground reserved for unbaptised children, and children were still being interred here as late as the nineteenth century, a practice that continued long after the early medieval community that built the oratory had vanished from the record.
