Earthwork, Connahy, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Ritual/Ceremonial
A low gravel hillock sitting on the flat floor of the Nore river valley does not look like much from a distance, roughly sixty metres long and no more than two or three metres high.
But local tradition in the townland of Connahy has long called this rise the "Kill", and the ground beneath it is said to hold numerous human burials. The name itself carries a quiet weight: "kill" derives from the Irish "cill", meaning a church or monastic cell, though whether that etymology applies here or whether the name simply accumulated around the burials over time is not recorded.
The hillock sits about a kilometre north-northeast of Foulksrath Castle, and the connection between the two sites is suggested by a mid-nineteenth-century account. Around 1851, a stone cist, a small box-like burial chamber formed from flat slabs, was uncovered at nearby Foulksrath. The same report mentioned that bodies had also been found in a sand-hill some distance away, and offered a specific explanation for why: during an epidemic, the account stated, people had been unwilling to bury the dead in the churchyard, and so the hill had served instead. The gravel hillock at Connahy is the most plausible candidate for the site described in that report. Whether the mound is entirely natural or was shaped and used by human hands remains uncertain; it appears to be a geological feature of the valley, but modification cannot be ruled out. What is clear is that the site has not been treated gently in recent times, having suffered damage from quarrying and from the construction of a silage clamp.