Cross-inscribed pillar, Lios Deargáin, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed pillar, Lios Deargáin, Co. Kerry

On the south-south-western slopes of Croaghskearda, overlooking the flat, waterlogged ground around Trabeg on the Dingle Peninsula, a stone pillar stands on a low cairn inside a large circular enclosure.

Both faces of the pillar are carved with a plain cross, and the enclosure itself served for centuries as a calluragh burial ground, a type of unconsecrated burial space traditionally used for unbaptised infants and others excluded from formal Christian interment. That combination, an ancient inscribed stone within a liminal burial space, gives the site a quietly layered quality that goes well beyond what its modest dimensions might suggest.

The pillar itself is modest in scale, standing 0.83 metres high and 0.41 metres wide, set upon a cairn just one metre across and roughly 22 centimetres high at the eastern edge of the enclosure. The plain cross carved on each face belongs to a tradition of early Christian stone carving found across the Irish-speaking west, where simple incised crosses marked sacred ground or served as focal points for devotion. The enclosure remained in use as a burial ground into the nineteenth century, as recorded in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for Cloghane, suggesting that the site retained local significance across a very long period. Also within the enclosure is a bullaun stone, a boulder with one or more cup-shaped hollows ground into its surface, often associated with early ecclesiastical sites and sometimes with ritual use of water. Several other features of uncertain origin round out a site that has not yet yielded all of its answers.

The site lies within the Corca Dhuibhne landscape of the Dingle Peninsula, a part of Kerry with an unusually dense concentration of early medieval and prehistoric monuments. The details recorded here draw on Julia Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the peninsula, which remains a foundational reference for the area. Visitors approaching from the Trabeg lowlands should expect rough upland terrain on the slopes of Croaghskearda, and the enclosure's circular form, along with the cairn-set pillar at its eastern edge, is the clearest thing to orient yourself around once you arrive.

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