Cross, Sceilg Mhichíl, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross, Sceilg Mhichíl, Co. Kerry

On the summit of Skellig Michael, that wave-battered pinnacle of rock rising from the Atlantic eight miles off the Kerry coast, the monastic remains that draw visitors up six hundred ancient stone steps are well documented.

Less remarked upon is a small rough-cut stone cross, easy to walk past, that stands at the south-western edge of the Monks' Graveyard. It measures just 37 centimetres tall and 44 centimetres wide, with a thickness of about 10 centimetres. Its head is flat rather than rounded or ringed, and its two arms are notably short, giving it a squat, almost abbreviated quality that sets it apart from the more elaborate high crosses found elsewhere in early Irish monasticism.

The cross was recorded in detail by Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press. Beyond the measurements and its position close to the graveyard's south-western boundary, the written record is spare. That sparseness is itself telling. On a site where monks lived, prayed, and were buried from perhaps the sixth or seventh century onwards, enduring conditions that are still formidable even for a day visitor today, objects like this cross were not decorative statements but functional markers, almost workaday in their roughness. The lack of ornament is not absence; it is a kind of severity that suits the place entirely.

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