The Discovery of Human Remains in Kilfinane - 2006

On the morning of Thursday the 12th October 2006, skeletal remains were unearthed as a digger was excavating a section of the Square on Main Street in Kilfinane, during a programme of road works in the town. Gardai from Bruff sealed off the scene while an archaeologist from Limerick County Council also carried out a preliminary investigation of the site, which had lain undisturbed since 1928.

In that year, during preparations for the raising of the Sacred Heart statue – still to be seen but relocated further to the west – a patch of ground known as the ‘Croppy Hole’ was disturbed and revealed the presence of human bones; the site subsequently being memorialised with a cement slab, and a cross inscribed thereon. Local tradition maintained that the spot marked the burial location of 1798 revolutionary Patrick ‘Staker’ Wallis, and other contemporaries executed during that restive era.

Following the 2006 discovery, matters remained in abeyance until 2020, when the Historical Society renewed attempts to have the bones – lodged in a National Museum warehouse during the intervening years – forensically examined. Consequent on these efforts, an official report was compiled by a professional osteoarchaeologist in late 2022, which stated that up to 7 individuals were included in the bone assemblage – over 1,400 pieces in all – including at least one female. Crucially, the remains were confirmed as being from the late 18th century, with a margin of error numbering 25 years before or after.

It was also stated that the ages of the individuals ranged from 25 to 45 – since the publication of Eunice Brandt’s book in 1909 the age of Staker Wallis has been given as 65 at the time of the 1798 Rebellion. It is not clear however what documentary sources Eunice Brandt was relying on in order to compile the early branches of the family tree there published, and the given chronology, in light of some other factual inaccuracies in the book, can hardly be deemed conclusive in clarifying the exact Wallis timeline.

What can we say about the actual identity of the victims? Apart from the reasonable assumption relating to Staker Wallis himself, the strongest circumstantial evidence pertains to John O’Donnell and Timothy McMahon, for whom we have contemporary newspaper evidence that, on Monday the 17th November 1800, they were ‘the same evening hanged in Kilfinane, and interred at the front of the gaol in said town’. They had been convicted in connection with the killings of Roger and James Sheedy from Darnstown earlier that year – the Sheedys having been deemed by the United Irishmen to be complicit in the capture of Staker Wallis two years before.

In the 1940s local historian Cait de Bhailís, who died in her 100th year in 2013, interviewed Ann Doran of Ballyorgan, who said that she could recall an elderly woman whose father – named Leen and a contemporary of Staker Wallis – was executed in Kilfinane. Miss Leen had also provided the name of Connery, or Connolly, who met the same fate.

In April 1814, during an attempt by soldiers to apprehend ‘disturbers of the peace then gathered at Kilfinane Chapel’, a man and woman were shot dead in the ensuing melee. This could explain the presence of female remains amongst the bone assemblage.

In April 1823, during an attack on the Palatine village of Glenosheen, a man named William, or Edward, Doyle of Ballyclough was killed. He was a member of the ‘Captain Rocks’ men, a designation similar to that of the Whiteboys. A ‘stout, low, young man, with red hair and whiskers’, his body was brought to Kilfinane where it lay unclaimed before being buried in quicklime beneath the Square. Local tradition also asserts that a man named Stack, from Streamhill near Doneraile, was subsequently executed for his alleged part in the Glenosheen incident.

At the time of writing, Kilfinane Coshlea Historical Society is maintaining its efforts to restore the remains uncovered in Kilfinane in 2006 to their native locality, believing that this would be the most appropriate method of bringing closure to a painful and oft-recalled epoch in local history, as well as constituting a suitable memorial for the patriots who still seek an undisturbed resting place, more than two centuries after being despatched to their untimely fate.

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