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lY. 



A HEPORT ON ANCIENT MONUMENTS IN CO. KERRY. 

 Bx SIR THOMAS NEWENHAM DEANE. 



(Plates I. and II.) 

 [Read February 13, 1893.] 



Dingle, Corkaguint, and SimEotrNDiNG Disteict, 



In the "Transactions of the Kilkenny Arch£eological Society," for 

 the years 1852-3 (vol. ii.) will be fonnd a most interestiag article 

 headed Dingle in the Sixteenth Century. I commend it to those who 

 care for antiquity. An extract will here sufiS.ce to show that the dis- 

 trict is rich in early remains, and is a fruitful field for investigation. 

 "Here, indeed, would the antiquary he tempted to designate this 

 Western ' tongue of land' as a Baal-bec of Ireland, if not of Western 

 Europe. I sometime since amused myself by making out from the 

 Ordnance Survey Maps and other sources of my own a tabular list of 

 the principal remains of antiquity in the barony of Corkaguiny, and I 

 found them to be as follows : — Eleven stone cahers, three cams, forty 

 calluraghs, or obsolete burying- grounds, where unbaptized children 

 only are interred, ten castles, eighteen artificial caves, twenty-one 

 churches in ruins, and nine church sites, two hundred and eighteen 

 cloghauns or beehive-shaped stone houses, sixteen cromleacs, twelve 

 large stone crosses, three hundi'ed and seventy-six earthen forts or 

 raths, one hundred and thirteen gallauns, or immense rude standing- 

 stones, fiity-four monumental pillars, most of them bearing Ogham 

 inscriptions, fifteen oratories, nine penitential stations, sixty-six wells, 

 many of them bearing the name of some saint, and twenty-nine mis- 

 cellaneous remains." {Loc. cit., p, 136.) 



Thus wrote Richard Hitchcock in 1852. The list is a large one. 

 I have not verified the accuracy of it ; but from my investigation of 

 the district, I have no hesitation in stating that few parts of Ireland, 

 or elsewhere, are so interestiag as the barony of Corkaguiny. 



I have also to refer to the interesting pamphlet written by 

 Du Noyer on the ancient city of Eahan, which forms a leading 

 feature in the district. 



At the close of last year the ruins on the property of Mr. Drum- 

 mond, of London, were scheduled under the provisions of Sir John 



