Ecclesiastical site, Caheracruttera, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical site, Caheracruttera, Co. Kerry

On a gentle south-facing slope above Castlemaine Harbour, there is an enclosure that even trained archaeologists have struggled to read clearly.

Dense vegetation smothers the walls, the interior has collapsed into overgrown rubble heaps, and the site's formal classification remains uncertain. What survives, though, is enough to sustain a quiet conviction that something significant once stood here. Locals have long called it An Scairt or Cathair na mBráithre, the latter translating roughly as the Cathair of the Brothers, and it is widely remembered as the site of a monastery. The field immediately to the east carries the name the monks' graveyard, and nearby features bear the Irish names Páircín na Manach and Srúill Chathair an tSagairt, names that collectively sketch out a monastic landscape even where the physical remains have become illegible.

The enclosure's outline is difficult to trace with confidence, since later field walls have been added over time and cannot easily be distinguished from whatever original boundary survives. One section, however, gives a clearer signal: a curved arc of walling in the south-west quadrant, 2.5 metres wide, 1.3 metres high on the interior face and 2.5 metres high externally, follows a regular curve that suggests the enclosure was originally circular or oval. That shape is consistent with the early Irish monastic tradition of the cashel or cathair, a roughly circular stone-walled enclosure. When the site was examined in 1939, the interior rubble was apparently still legible enough to identify foundations of both rectangular and circular structures, and the first edition Ordnance Survey map had already recorded two rectangular buildings within the walls. Also noted in 1939 were mounds of blackened earth packed with shells, and a human skull had been unearthed from the southern part of the site at some point before that. Lying outside the enclosure to the south-east is a bullaun stone, now broken in two and missing much of its lower section. A bullaun is a carved stone bearing one or more cup-shaped depressions, most often associated with early Christian sites and sometimes connected with ritual or medicinal use. This one, a rough sandstone block, retains a circular depression roughly 24 centimetres across and 15 centimetres deep, with almost vertical sides.

The site sits within a broader area of the Dingle Peninsula extensively surveyed for the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986, which brought together a remarkable concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains. The combination here of a curved enclosure wall, Irish place names preserving monastic memory, a possible associated burial ground, and a bullaun stone adds up to a compelling picture, even if the vegetation and the centuries have made certainty impossible.

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