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Children's burial ground in Greenane Islands

Children's burial ground

What is recorded here

Illaunakilla is a small island near Ahascortal where children were buried before the practice stopped three hundred years ago. It belongs to the Greenane Islands, a scattered group off the Kerry coast where Carraig a tSagairt still carries the memory of priests celebrating mass in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The children's ground is no longer used, but it remains a place of loss, parenthood and belonging, marked by age rather than forgetting.
Illaunakilla is one of a group of islands near Templenoe that are collectively known as the Greenane Islands. The OSNB recorded an old burial ground here 'not used these three hundred years', and a second island, Carraig a tSagairt, situated NE of Illaunakilla, where priests used to 'celebrate mass in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries' (Templeno, 37). It was not possible to visit the island and the site is not remembered locally The above description is derived from A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan (compilers), 'The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry'. Cork University Press (1996), no. 1017. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 30 July 2013

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What survives
Recorded monument

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