Ecclesiastical enclosure, Corr Áille, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Corr Áille, Co. Kerry

On the steep north-eastern slopes of Reenconnell, on the Dingle Peninsula, a roughly oval stone enclosure sits beside the ancient route known as the Saint's Road, the traditional path walked by pilgrims making their way to the summit of Brandon Mountain.

The enclosure is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone-walled settlement or religious compound, and what makes this particular example quietly arresting is the density of features compressed within and around it: a corbelled stone hut, two leachts, a broken cross-slab, a handful of graves, and two further corbelled huts pressed up against the outside of the wall, one of them concealing a souterrain beneath it.

A leacht is a low, roughly rectangular mound of stones, usually associated with early Christian devotional practice, sometimes marking a burial or serving as a focus for prayer on pilgrimage routes. The better-preserved of the two here measures approximately four by five metres and is retained by drystone walling. Propped within a smaller stone mound beside it stands a substantial cross-slab, 2.48 metres long but broken in two, the larger section still upright and the smaller fragment resting loose at its base. The eastern face carries two incised crosses, one above the other. The lower is equal-armed with bifurcated terminals curving into rough semi-circles; the upper bears a Latin cross whose head expands into two large spiral motifs filling the spaces between the arms and the shaft. There is a reasonable possibility that the slab has been re-erected upside down, which would place those spirals, quite dramatically, at the foot rather than the crown. The clochauns, corbelled drystone huts whose beehive construction requires no mortar and no roof timbers, survive in varying states of preservation. The hut inside the enclosure retains walls up to 1.17 metres high; the best-preserved of the two exterior huts reaches 1.75 metres, with a lintelled opening leading to a souterrain, an underground passage built from drystone, now inaccessible. The site appears to have had a later life as a calluragh, a burial ground used for unbaptised infants or others excluded from consecrated ground, which explains the graves that do not obviously belong to the early ecclesiastical phase.

The site lies on the eastern side of the Saint's Road as it climbs toward Brandon Mountain, so it falls naturally along the line of the traditional pilgrimage ascent. The ground inside the enclosure is uneven, partly because of outcropping rock that has been incorporated into an internal dividing wall of noticeably rougher construction than the cashel wall itself. The original southern entrance, 1.7 metres wide, is now blocked by a large slab.

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