Cave

The National Monuments Service's description

On the E-slope of Knockfennell Hill overlooking Lough Gur and 30m SE of the summit where a ring-cairn (LI032-014009-) is located. Excellent views to the NE, E and SW towards Knockadoon Hill which is occupied by an extensive range of prehistoric settlement sites and Lough Gur Castle (LI032-022001/37-). The cave entrance is depicted on both the 1840 ed. OSi 6-inch map and on the 1897 ed. OSi 25-inch map.
In 2003 Marion Dowd undertook a a site visit but was unable to locate the cave. Dowd (2004, 534) records a box in the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) labelled ‘Box 49 Cave at Castle Hewson near Askeaton, Co. Limerick’ which contains an unpublished letter by R. J. Ussher to R. F. Scharff dated 04/05/1904. It states ‘herewith the results of three hours digging superficial deposit of Red Cellar Lough Gur. Loose dry earth. Having made a hole in it I shall probably dig there deeper on Friday the 6th as the cave is not coming to an end so far … I see nothing particular but man (finger), pig and metat[arsal/carpal] of small ruminants also leather!’. Three human bones found during this exploration survive and represent two individuals, an adult and a juvenile. An unpublished handwritten report written by A. W. Stelfox located in the NMI describes material found in the cave including a ‘metatarsal of small adult, shaft of humerus of juvenile, metatarsal of juvenile ’, bones of extinct and domestic fauna, a ‘bone handled pen’, a bone needle and clay pipe fragment. The report presumably relates to the 1904 investigation based on the correlation of identifications of the human remains. These three bones represent two individuals – an adult (foot phalanx and talus) and a juvenile (rib fragment) (Fibiger 2016, 22). The adult talus returned a Neolithic date of 4671±38 BP (Dowd 2008). The cave was excavated by S .P. Ó Ríordáin in 1938 but the results were never published. The bones recovered from this excavation are now housed in the National Museum of Ireland (Reg. No. NMINH:1938.169; drawer 309.C.1-2) and are labelled “Bones from a small fissure in the limestone known as the ‘Red Cellar’; Given by Prof S. P. O’Riordan; near Lough Gur, Co. Limerick; Excavated autumn 1938” (pers. comm. Dr. Marion Dowd 09/10/2020; NMI Correspondence from Nigel Monahan 09/10/2020). It appears that extinct faunal remains were discovered but nothing of archaeological significance. The cave was described by Cleary (2018, 6-7) as a 'narrow solution crevice on the south-facing slope of the hill. Bones of elk, Arctic lemming, brown bear and other unspecified species were recovered from the cave (O'Kelly 1941). The bones of larger animals may have been brought into the cave by scavengers such as hyenas or foxes.The bear bones were dated to the period between 12,747 and 12,247 years ago (Woodman 2015, table 2.1) and may have been the last in the sequence of animal bones from the Red Cellar Cave'. The cave entrance is visible as rough overgrown ground on the side of the Knockfennell Hill on OSi orthoimage taken 2005-12; Digital Globe orthoimages taken 2011-2013; Google Earth orthoimages taken 16/03/2016 and 28/06/2018.

See attached Google Street View Capture 2011 and Google Earth orthoimages

Compiled by: Edmond O’Donovan

Revised by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of revised upload: 10 October 2020

References

Woodman, P.C. 2015 Ireland's First Settlers: Time and the Mesolithic. Oxbow Books.

Dowd, M. A. 2008 The use of caves for funerary and ritual practises in Neolithic Ireland. Antiquity 82, 305-317.

Dowd, M.A. 2004 Caves: sacred places on the Irish landscape. Unpublished PhD thesis. University College, Cork.

Dowd, M. 2015 The archaeology of caves in Ireland. Oxford. Oxbow Books.

Cleary, R. 2018 The archaeology of Lough Gur. Dublin. Wordwell.

Fibiger, L. 2016. Osteoarchaeological analysis of human skeletal remains from 23 Irish caves. In: M. Dowd (ed.) Underground archaeology: studies on human bones and artefacts from Ireland’s caves. Oxbow, Oxford.

O'Kelly, M.J. 1941 A survey of the antiquities in the barony of Small County, Co. Limerick. Unpublished MA thesis, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork.

Leask, H.G. et al. 1938 Notes on Excavations in Éire, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, during 1938. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Vol. 4, 314-325.