What is recorded here

Carnfree ridge holds a rectangular earthen enclosure where church ruins and children’s bones overlap, suggesting the graveyard outlived the worship that first gathered there. The SE-facing slope may have warmed small bodies during life and received them again after death. When the churches fell silent in the late sixteenth or seventeenth century, the community may have kept returning to bury its youngest, trusting the old ground more than any remaining wall.

On a SE facing slope at the E end of the Carnfree ridge. The structures (RO028-075001; RO028-075005-) are within a rectangular enclosure (RO028-075002-) (int. dims 42.3m E-W; 29.5m N-S) defined by earthen banks (Wth 2m; H 0.3-0.5m) which may have been a graveyard, and burials, both pre- and post-dating the church structures, were found inside and outside both structures. A number of neo-natal remains recovered in the area supports a local tradition that the structures continued in use as a children's burial ground (RO028-075012-) after the church buildings were abandoned in the late sixteenth or seventeenth century. (Shanahan 2006, 6-9; 2009, 455-6). Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 13th September, 2010.

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