AR01055_EMAP_Gazetteer_of_Sites_4-2_10.pdf - The Heritage ...

Kerry
Ardfert, Co. Kerry
Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Enclosure.
Grid Ref: Q786214
SMR No: 20:46
Excavation Licence: E000493; 97E0302
Excavation Duration/Year: 1989-1992; 1995; 2000, 1997; 1999 & 2000
Site Director: Fionnbarr Moore (National Monuments Service); Martin Reid (National
Monuments Service); Isabell Bennett (Freelance)
Ardfert is an important ecclesiastical site in north Kerry which revealed considerable evidence
for a seventh-eighteenth cemetery, remains of an eleventh century stone church or damliac
as well as significant early medieval domestic and agricultural evidence. The area around and
inside Ardfert Cathedral was substantially excavated as part of major restorative works on the
buildings by the National Monuments Service from 1989-2000. The place name Ardfert or Ard
ferta means the height of the burial mounds though the site is also known as Ard Ferta
Brenainn indicating its strong traditional links with the late fifth century saint Brendan ‘The
Navigator’ who is reputed to have founded the monastery. The monastic site is located near
the northwest Kerry coastline on a very slightly elevated area of good limestone enriched
ground commanding views to the west, north and east over a flat plain. A small river known
as the ‘Tyshe’ flows by the monastic site to the north and may well have coursed through the
monastic enclosure.
Three medieval churches survive on the site today. The Cathedral consists of a long nave and
chancel with a short south aisle and remains of a vestry on its north wall and can be variously
dated from the eleventh-seventeenth centuries. To the northwest of the cathedral is a small
late twelfth century Romanesque nave and chancel church known locally as ‘Templenahoe’. A
plain fifteenth century structure known as ‘Templenagriffin’ is located to the northwest and
was constructed at a period when major renovations were being carried out on the cathedral.
The building is aligned with ‘Templenahoe’ and early burials beneath the cathedral which
might indicate that it was built on the site of an earlier church. Two other churches and an
anchorite’s cell were recorded by William Molyneaux on the site around A.D. 1683 (Moore
2007, 38) but do not survive today. A round tower once stood to the southwest of the
cathedral but collapsed in a storm in A.D. 1771. The ruins of a Franciscan friary founded by
Thomas Fitzmaurice in A.D. 1253 survive to the east of Ardfert village.
The earliest finds on the site comprised two fifth-eighth century ogham stones: one
incorporated into the north wall of Templenagriffin with a further example originally
discovered in a field to the west of this building. The excavations at Ardfert uncovered
evidence for a large early medieval cemetery extending over a wide area, inside and
immediately outside the later thirteenth century cathedral and containing over 2,300 burials
dating from the seventh to eighteenth century. The earliest burials were uncovered
underneath and even above the plinth level of the eleventh century damliac - the stone
church at Ardfert mentioned in the Annals of Inisfallen in A.D. 1046. Eleven burials within the
nave area of the cathedral were sealed by the damliac walls. In total, thirty five burials were
directly sealed by the walls of the thirteenth century cathedral.
The earliest burials were orientated on a significantly different alignment to both the eleventh
century damliac and the later thirteenth century cathedral and can be considered earlier than
both of these buildings. Forty two burials out of a total of seven hundred and twenty five
burials in the entire nave and south aisle area were aligned southeast of the cathedral’s
orientation while a further twenty were aligned to the northeast of it. Apart from one, all the
burials deviating from the cathedral’s alignment in this area were in the lowest and earliest
levels; a pattern replicated elsewhere within the south transept’s eastern chapel and along
the north wall of the cathedral.
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