What is recorded here

Killeagh is a children's burial ground inside a moated site called Killeen, where expectant mothers walked rounds for safe delivery and still-born babies were buried within the earth. They threw field-stones at a boulder outside the northeast corner before leaving, marking each journey with a small collision against stone. The ground was levelled in 1987, erasing the uneven interior but not the purpose of the rounds or the reason the place kept its name.

In a levelled moated site (KE048-043001-). In the 1840s 'a remarkable large Danish fort [KE048-043001-] in which is a burial ground for children, hence it is called by the inhabitants Killeen' was recorded (OSNB, Molahiffe, no. 1, 39). Prior to the levelling of the moated site in 1987, its interior was described in 1986 as undulating and uneven but no graves or grave-markers were noted (CDAS; O'Hare 2000, 15). According to O'Hare (1996, 70), rounds were made at the moated site by expectant mothers up until sixty or seventy years ago in the hope of securing a safe delivery and if a child was still-born, it was buried within the moated site. Having completed the rounds, patrons would throw a field-stone against a boulder which was located immediately outside the NE corner of the moated site (ibid.). (Castleisland District Archaeological Survey) Compiled by: Elizabeth Byrne, Ursula Egan and Sheila Ronan, Archaeological Survey Unit, University College, Cork. Date of upload: 31 January 2011

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