What is recorded here

Aharla is a small drystone grave-plot beside Teampall Bhreacáin in County Galway, holding broken fragments of the South Cross. It belongs to a cluster of five leabaí tied to two ancient churches, marking a place where worship and death shared the same ground. The bluff may have felt crowded with memory, the cross laid open like a gift returned to the earth.

This is one of five leabaí or grave-plots (see also GA110-023001-, GA110-023002-, GA110-023003- and GA110-023009-) associated with Teampall Bhreacáin (GA110-010001-) and Teampall an Phoill (GA110-010003-). Named 'Aharla' on the OS 6-inch maps, this subrectangular drystone enclosure (L 4.8m, Wth 4.55m) stands on a low bluff to S of Teampall Bhreacáin. Lying on a plinth within it are fragments of the high cross (GA110-023008-) known as the South Cross. Robinson (1980) marks this enclosure as Leaba Bhreacáin (see GA110-023001-). (Gosling 1993, 145, no. 838) Compiled by: Olive Alcock Date of upload: 8 March 2016

Linked to the early Christian sites of Teampall Bhreacáin and Teampall an Phoill, the name "Aharla" may derive from a local saint or ecclesiastical figure associated with the Eoghanacht dynasty. No specific cure or tradition is recorded, but such sites were often centres of pilgrimage and local worship in early Ireland.

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