What is recorded here

Under the soil of Caherlehillan, more than a hundred small graves wait beside the ghost of a wooden church. Students from University College Cork dug through them for years, pulling up cross-slabs and jars of quartz pebbles that glittered like frozen rain. The children never spoke, but their markers crowded the earth like a village that refused to leave.

In the NE quadrant of an ecclesiastical enclosure (KE070-043----). Portion of the burial ground was excavated during the undergraduate training programme of the Department of Archaeology, UCC, between 1992 and 2004 (see Sheehan 1994, 41-2; 1995, 43-4; 1996, 40-41; 1997, 47; 1998, 82; 2000a, 89; 2000b, 112; 2004, 211-12; 2006, 214). Prior to excavation it comprised an irregular area (c. 14m E-W; c. 11m N-S) occupied by many plain grave-markers. Over one hundred graves were excavated, including both stone-lined and dug examples, many of which contained quartz pebbles. Excavation revealed evidence for a wooden church (KE070-043007-) underlying the burial ground and two cross-slabs (KE070-043006-, KE070-0430011-) were also recovered from it. (O'Sullivan and Sheehan 1996, 263-5, no. 934). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Kerry. Volume I: South-West Kerry' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 30 May 2011

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