Ecclesiastical enclosure, Teeromoyle, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ecclesiastical Sites
On a gentle slope of poor pasture between Teermoyle mountain and the Ferta river, a cluster of some thirty small upright stone slabs stands in rough rows beneath spruce trees.
Most visitors to the Iveragh peninsula in County Kerry pass without noticing it, and that is in a way appropriate: this was a ceallĂșnach, an informal burial ground used for those who could not be interred in consecrated ground, among them unbaptised infants. Such places occupy an ambiguous space in Irish religious life, neither fully inside nor outside the Church's reach, and this one remained in use until the early twentieth century.
The burial area is raised slightly above the surrounding ground, bounded partly by old field walls and partly by a stony bank, and it sits towards the northern end of what appears to be an older and larger enclosure. That earlier boundary survives as a curving stretch of stony bank with an external fosse, a shallow defensive or demarcating ditch, running roughly 30 metres to the northwest. Against its inner face lie the foundations of a substantial rectangular building, roughly 15.8 metres by 11.2 metres, hinting at an organised early ecclesiastical presence on the site long before the informal burials began. Two stones within the burial area speak to that earlier layer: a cross-slab and an ogham stone, the latter inscribed in a form of early medieval writing that uses a series of notches and strokes along a central line. Skinner also records that rounds, a form of penitential or devotional circuit performed at sacred sites, were formerly carried out here on Good Fridays, suggesting the place retained a living religious significance well into modern times.