What is recorded here

No visible marker separates the possible camp sites, yet the ground remains charged with the memory of O'Neill and O'Donnell waiting for destiny. Some men may have stood at Coolcarron, others at Mullagh or Belgooly, but every suggestion points to the same breath-held moment before Kinsale. The camp vanished not through destruction but through the ordinary erosion of time, leaving behind a gap wide enough for imagination to occupy.

The exact location of the Irish Camp, where the forces of O'Neill and O'Donnell camped immediately before the Battle of Kinsale, is not known. Hayes-McCoy (1949, 1966) locates it in Coolcarron, though his map actually shows it in the townland of Mullagh; this identification was followed by later writers (Mulcahy 1966). However, the Annals of the Four Masters (O'Donovan 1851) place the camp in Belgooly (see Silke 1970, 140). Most of the camp sites associated with the battle are depicted on the Trinity College painting (Morgan 2004, 114) but this does not show the Irish Camp because it lay outside the area depicted in the painting. The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009

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