What is recorded here

Fifty-five people sleep in six neat rows beneath Moneycooly, waiting for houses they never imagined. They had no gifts, no markers, no names, only shallow pits cut into clay and the occasional slab laid across them like a hand. The Early Christian dead kept their distance from the bowl furnaces a hundred metres away, as if heat and hammering belonged to the living while silence belonged to them.

In 2004, in advance of the construction of a large housing estate, archaeological test trenching (Duffy C. Excavation Licence No. 04E0644) followed by monitoring of topsoil-stripping over the entire site resulted in the discovery and excavation of a previously unrecorded burial ground (KD010-040----) and, c. 100m to the ESE, two bowl furnaces (KD011-061----). The burials were on a very slight rise and were set out in six rows within a roughly subrectangular area (14m E-W; 6.5m N-S), with two juvenile burials immediately to the north of the main group. The graves were simple unlined pits excavated through an upper, largely stone-free, subsoil into the surface of a lower stony clay subsoil that formed the base of the cuts. All but two were aligned east-west. There were occasional instances of small slabs laid at the side of the grave or overlying the interments. At least 55 individuals are represented among the burials, including disarticulated remains and skeletons disturbed by later grave-cuts. No artefacts were found with any of the burials, but the cemetery is most likely to date to the Early Christian period. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 11 January 2013

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.