Cross, Cill Chuáin, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross, Cill Chuáin, Co. Kerry

In a small graveyard on the Dingle Peninsula, one of the grave markers is easy to miss: a modest stone cross slab, partially swallowed by the ground, with one arm apparently broken away.

It marks Grave No. 128 in Kilquane Graveyard, and its incompleteness is part of what makes it worth pausing over. Cross slabs of this kind, flat stones incised or shaped with a cross form, are among the earliest types of Christian grave markers found in Ireland, and this one sits quietly in the soil, doing its job without fanfare.

The graveyard lies in the townland of Kilquane, roughly 8.7 kilometres northwest of Dingle and about 2.3 kilometres southeast of Feohanagh. To the east, Mt. Brandon, the highest peak on the peninsula, rises over the site. The ground here slopes very gently westward, and the views open out over countryside that eventually meets the Atlantic. In 2011, archaeologists Ann Frykler and Robert Hanbidge of Headland Archaeology Ltd. conducted a graveyard survey and catalogued this cross among the miscellaneous finds, logging it as Miscellaneous 04. Their record notes the partial burial and the missing arm, details that raise questions the survey could not answer: how old the stone is, when the arm was lost, and whether more of it lies beneath the surface.

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Pete F
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