Cill (Site of) — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Keel field is a paupers' graveyard where the land itself may have swallowed the dead, leaving only a low stony arc and two whitethorn trees to mark the edge of forgetting. In 1934, rough headstones still broke through the soil, but the field has since become pasture, and the dead have vanished into the slope like water into chalk. What remains is not a monument but a shape of absence: a shallow dish in the earth where grief was buried so quickly it stopped being named.

In pasture, on NW-facing slope. Arc of low stony scarp (max. H 1.1m) SW->NW and two whitethorn trees c. 18m to E indicate site; no surface evidence for burials. Not shown on 1842 or 1905 OS 6-inch maps. According to Bowman (1934, 373-4), field called 'the Keel field'; site 'practically levelled' with diameter of 25yds; whitethorn tree in centre with about '15 rough headstones...these stones vary in height from 6ins to 14ins'. According to local information, known locally as 'paupers' graveyard' or 'cill' and old famine road c. 16m to N. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

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