Ogham stone (present location)

The National Monuments Service's description

This is the present location for the stone found on Church Island, Co. Kerry (KE079-032004-). This was found some years prior to the excavation on Church Island, Co. Kerry, in a secondary position in the SW quadrant of the island (O'Kelly and Kavanagh 1945, 101-10). Fractured at its base, it measures 1.49m x 0.36m x0.1m thick. It features a compass-drawn, incised Maltese cross enclosed in an outline circle. The cross is composed of a central circle flanked by four smaller circles which are joined to the enclosing circle by four petals with truncated tips. Pendant from the circle is a broad shaft. The excavator suggested a date of between 650 and 750 AD for the design. An ogham inscription occupies both angles and the top of the slab. It is secondary to the design, and was read by Kavanagh (in O'Kelly and Kavanagh 1945, 109) as: BECCDINN MACI RI[T(T)A]VVECASS. In the third word, a faint score on the side of the stone may indicate an attempt to fit in the conjectured T(T)A; the two final notches of the E are superimposed on the forfid C. (O'Sullivan and Sheehan, 1996, no. 927)

This stone has been studied as part of the ‘Ogham in 3D’ project undertaken by the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. To access details go to the following website: http://ogham.celt.dias.ie/search.php?ciic=Church_Island

Updated by: Paul Walsh

Revised date of upload: 6 January 2015

References

O'Sullivan, A. and Sheehan, J. 1996 The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry. Cork University press.

O'Kelly, M.J. and Kavanagh, S. 1954 An ogham-inscribed cross-slab from County Kerry. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Socity 59, 101-110.