Cross-slab, Curra, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Curra, Co. Kerry

In a narrow strip of pasture between the Behy river and the edge of Curra Wood, a low mounded area holds around a hundred small upright stones.

None of them bear names. Most stand no higher than thirty centimetres and are laid out in rows running roughly northwest to southeast, the kind of quiet, insistent order that suggests deliberate arrangement rather than gradual accumulation. At the northern end of the site, one modest slab carries the single distinguishing mark of the whole place: a plain Latin cross incised on its northeast face.

The site was recorded in the Ordnance Survey Name Books as an unenclosed children's burial ground, a cillín in Irish tradition. Cillíní were informal burial grounds used for unbaptised infants and others considered ineligible for consecrated ground, typically situated at liminal spots such as field boundaries, riverbanks, or old earthworks. They are common across Ireland but are frequently unmarked and easy to overlook. What makes this one slightly unusual is that it appears to have served as a formal graveyard during at least part of the twentieth century, the southern portion of the site containing grave-markers that look more recent than the older, unadorned slabs clustered towards the centre. The raised ground at the heart of the site, lifted roughly seventy centimetres above the surrounding pasture and thick with holly and ash, gives the place a density that feels older than any of its individual stones.

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Pete F
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