Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cool, Co. Kerry

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cool, Co. Kerry

On Valentia Island, towards the centre of the island on a south-facing slope overlooking the Portmagee Channel, there is an ancient ecclesiastical enclosure whose most striking feature may be who was buried there rather than anything built above ground.

Known as Kildreenagh or Cill Draighneach, the site functioned for centuries as a ceallĂșnach, a type of unconsecrated burial ground reserved for those excluded from the rites of the Church. When the antiquarian R.J. Brash documented it in 1879, local memory held that it was used only for unbaptised children and suicides, with just a single adult burial, that of an old woman, recalled within living tradition at the time.

The enclosure itself is roughly oval and substantial, measuring approximately 47 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west. Only parts of the original boundary survive in their early form: in the southern and western quadrants, a steep-sided earthen bank, topped with a later wall, rises to an external height of 2.3 metres. Two entrance gaps may once have existed, one to the south-west, barely half a metre wide, and a second possible opening to the south-south-east, marked on its eastern side by an upright stone just over a metre tall. The eastern boundary has been altered more drastically, partly replaced by modern stone walling and a strip of conifers planted in the early 1980s. Within the enclosed area, the ground slopes gently southward and holds the foundations of five huts, an ogham stone (ogham being an early medieval script carved in notched lines along the edges of stone), a shrine, and a holed stone. Uninscribed grave-markers, belonging to the ceallĂșnach use of the site, are concentrated in the southern and south-eastern portions, their anonymity a deliberate reflection of the marginal status their occupants held in the eyes of the institutional Church.

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