What is recorded here

Kill church in Mayo once kept a small basin stone outside its south chancel, three shallow cuts radiating from the depression like a forgotten star. Whether for water, oil, blood or ceremony, the shape suggests something repeated until it became sacred. The stone has vanished, leaving behind a hole in the story and a challenge to imagine what hands turned it.

Situated within the complex of ecclesiastical remains at Kill: it is associated with the graveyard (MA085-013002-). Westropp (1911a, 25) mentions ‘an early-looking bullaun, or basin- stone, in the graveyard’, placing it ‘outside the chancel to the south’ (1911a, 37). He describes it briefly as ‘a small shallow basin from which three cuts radiate irregularly’. A drawing of this ‘basin-stone’ is included in Westropp’s pl. V (1911a), from which the ‘cuts’ appear to be narrow grooves radiating from a small circular depression. There is now no trace of a stone resembling this description at the place indicated, nor was any noted during the surveys of the monuments at Kill. The above description is derived from: New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 5: Archaeology. Edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell. (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. 2007). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated. Date of upload: 4 December 2018

Dated to the early Christian period, the bullaun stone was likely used for ritual washing, associated with monastic or ecclesiastical activity. Such stones often held symbolic or sacred significance in Christian and pre-Christian traditions.

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