Cist, Loughgur, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Burial Sites
On a limestone crag on the northern flank of Knockadoon Hill, at roughly 300 feet above the surrounding landscape, a small stone-lined grave holds the remains of four children and fragments of an adult hand.
It is not marked on any Ordnance Survey historic map, and the woodland that has grown up around it since its excavation means it is effectively invisible even on recent satellite imagery. The grave is a cist, a type of prehistoric burial structure in which a pit is lined and covered with flat or rough-cut stone slabs to form a box-like chamber, and this particular example, recorded as Feature 30, was found to be trapezoidal in plan and built from irregularly shaped limestone blocks.
The cist was uncovered during a ten-week excavation carried out between 26 May and 31 July 1987, led by archaeologist Rose Cleary and funded by a grant from the Royal Irish Academy. Three cist graves in total were excavated that season, all of them concentrated at the northern end of the Knockadoon site. The human remains from Feature 30, four children and segments of an adult hand, raise questions that the excavation record does not fully answer. Whether the burials were contemporary with one another, or represent a place returned to over time, is not established in the published summary. A second cist lies at the same location, and a cave sits approximately 30 metres to the north-west, suggesting this part of the hill held some sustained significance for the people who used it.
Knockadoon is a promontory that juts into Lough Gur, a lake in County Limerick long known for the density and variety of its prehistoric remains, including stone circles, enclosures, and habitation sites. The cist itself is now concealed beneath woodland on the northern slope and is not accessible or visible as a discrete feature. Visitors to the wider Lough Gur area will find interpretive trails and a visitor centre near the lakeshore, but the crag where Feature 30 was recorded asks for more careful navigation and offers little to see on the surface. The significance lies less in what can be observed and more in what was quietly present in the hillside for so long before anyone thought to look.