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Burial mound in Kilgarriff West

Burial mound

What is recorded here

Kilgarriff West holds a fifteen-metre grass mound that airport builders revealed in 1981 but forgot, forcing a 2009 rediscovery after years of administrative blindness. Local tradition whispers that the mound contains children or Famine victims, transforming forgotten construction debris into a chamber of unresolved grief. The earth keeps what human record-keeping loses, waiting patiently for someone to stop measuring profit and start listening to the shape of the ground.
Located close to the S boundary of Knock International Airport. This monument is not indicated on any edition of the OS 6-inch maps. It was discovered during construction work at the airport in 1981, but its exact location was not recorded at the time (NMI Correspondence Files). It was listed in the SMR (1991) as an unlocated mound and was not listed in the RMP (1997). It was rediscovered in 2009 during an archaeological assessment (pers. comm. M. Byrne, 2009). It consist of a grass-covered mound (max. dim. 15m E−W; H c. 2m), which according to local tradition may have been used as a Famine burial ground or a children’s burial ground. Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 21 May 2021

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

What survives
Recorded monument

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