What is recorded here

Cist in Duninga holds two flagged graves inside a large enclosure on the Kilkenny and Carlow boundary, where a child and a full-grown man were buried beside each other with clay vessels that careless diggers broke. The Rathduff Trench runs past its north edge like a forgotten border between ancient territories, while gravel hunters have since bitten into the monument itself. What remains is a sharp little wound in the ground, marking both the dead and the people who stopped seeing them as worthy of care.

On the county boundary between Kilkenny and Carlow and located at the E end of a linear earthwork (KK016-006----; KK016-006001-; KK016-006002-; KK021-006----) known as, ‘Rathduff Trench’ which roughly E-W runs immediately outside the N quadrant. One of two cist burials found within a large enclosure (KK021-008----). According to the OS Letters (1839), ‘The Revd. W.K. Boroughs states that two small graves [KK021-008001-; KK021-008002-] were some years ago discovered at this rath about two feet [0.61m] under the surface, beside each other, the one that of a child, the other that of a full grown man. These graves were neatly flagged at the bottom and sides; one was eighteen inches [0.47m] long and fourteen [0.36m] high, the other three feet [0.91m] by eighteen inches [0.47m]. In each was found an earthen vessel of baked clay which was broken by the carelessness of the diggers. The bones were not charred by fire. This is a fine fort and formed one of a chain which seems to have separated two important ancient territories’ (O’Flanagan 1930, vol. 2, 23-4 (9)). According to Feeley (2008, 46) the monument had been quarried into for gravel. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 19 April 2021

Cist in Duninga is a small stone burial chamber, likely dating to the Early Christian or Bronze Age period. Its location on a linear earthwork suggests a possible ritual or territorial significance in the landscape.

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