Graveyard, Inis Mhic Aoibhleáin, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Inis Mhic Aoibhleáin, Co. Kerry

The southernmost of the Blasket Islands carries, on its eastern slopes, the remnants of an Early Christian monastic settlement that includes what appears to have been a small burial ground.

What makes it quietly unusual is how tentative the evidence is: the ground does not announce itself as a cemetery in any obvious way. Instead, the suggestion of burial comes from a handful of low orthostats, upright stones set into the earth, and from the recorded former presence of cross-slabs, decorated stones that have since disappeared from the site.

Inishvickillane lies seven miles south-west of Slea Head and around nine miles from Dunquin pier, the nearest point from which a boat might set out. The island covers 199 acres in total, and the monastic complex sits at its south-eastern end, on the eastern slopes of a rocky bluff that rises sharply above the surrounding ground. The possible burial area lies to the east of an oratory, a small early medieval prayer house of the kind found at several island sites along this stretch of the Irish Atlantic coast, and it surrounds a leacht, a low commemorative cairn or altar typically associated with Early Christian devotional practice. The arrangement, an oratory, a leacht, and an enclosed area of ground marked by upright stones, follows a pattern recognisable at other Hiberno-Christian sites, though here the physical traces are sparse enough that the identification as a graveyard rests on inference as much as evidence.

Access to Inishvickillane is not straightforward. The nine-mile distance from Dunquin and the island's privately held status mean that casual visits are rare, and the crossing is subject to the considerable unpredictability of weather in Blasket Sound. The monastic remains sit on a slope visible from the sea, but the low orthostats that hint at burial would be easy to overlook without knowing where to look.

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