What is recorded here

Kilgarvan holds a possible ancient enclosure beneath its modern graveyard wall, where a hidden stone plinth still projects inward at the east end. The current structure may have swallowed an older boundary rather than replacing it, suggesting the living community kept deadening its own history by building upon it. That much of the evidence remains buried or obscured means the place resists easy certainty, preserving a boundary between memory and invention.

Listed in the 1991 SMR and the 1996 RMP as ‘enclosure –possible’, the source of this record is uncertain. It may be based on a reference in the 1838 OS Letters (O’Flanagan 1927, 108) to a section of the enclosing graveyard wall at NE that 'appears to be of ancient erection'. There is slight evidence of a difference at the E end of the N wall of the graveyard: Projecting 0.3m from beneath the inner face of the graveyard wall, is a stone plinth (L 11m; H 0.4m) consisting of two courses of what appears to be drystone walling. It is not visible beneath the external, N face of the wall. It is possible that an earlier graveyard wall/enclosure was here incorporated into the current graveyard wall. Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 15 May 2020

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