Buried secrets of the battle’s wall of skulls

■ Sir —Had Caleb Threlkeld had a look in those barrels standing on the Liffey quayside (Joe Kennedy’s, as always, interesting article last Sunday), he would have seen few skulls — moss-covered or no.

Skulls being essentially large empty shells of substantial enough volume but of little mass, would scarcely be a cost efficient product to export for crushing — when the large bones like humerus, femur or tibia would pack better and produce a greater amount of end product.

That of course is conjecture but what is not is why the skulls were not in the barrels awaiting shipment. For a few years after the battle the bones lay bleaching on sites like Kilcommedan Hill — Joe’s Horse Ridge — described as being as if snow-covered, such were the amount of bones lying there. Apparently plague in the area didn’t allow for any attempt to dignify the remains, but when manpower became available the local people collected the skulls and brought them on carts to Kilconnell Friary five miles away.

There they were constructed into a wall just outside the Friary walls and probably blessed by the few Franciscans still there. It was a noble gesture involving considerable logistical effort, as they ensured Aughrim’s fallen had to some degree been taken to a place of sacred ground.

Eighteen years after the battle, a Trinity academic Dr Thomas Molyneux described in his Journey to Connaught an 88ft long wall of skulls surrounding the churchyard of the Franciscan Abbey at Kilconnell. The skulls were arranged face outwards, piled very orderly up to a height of four feet and a breadth of over five feet. His measuring was done with his walking cane which was two feet eight inches long. He estimated that there were 5,000 skulls there.

In time the wall of skulls, built by men used to turf clamping and stone walling, began to disintegrate and in due course the scattered remains excited disgust from visitors to the

Friary ruins at the “barbarity” of the local people who would tolerate such a scenario.

This got to the ear of Lord Clonbrock who organised a squad of men to dig a pit and bury the skulls. The search goes on for the definite site of this burial place which was probably in what is now a slight depression directly south west of the entry stile to the Friary. So when the scavenging contractors came to Aughrim they would have found no skulls.

One question which intrigues is who buried the Williamite dead? Such an operation would have been unusual at the time as battlefield bone scavenging went on for years afterwards, even beyond Napoleonic times.

If mass burial was done for the Dutchmen, why did

Lord Clancarty, who invested considerable time and effort in King William’s campaign, not arrange for a memorial stone?

He had a throne built in his ballroom for the king’s visit which never came about. This family have left us stunning limestone monuments to their horses and dogs — so surely they might have marked the final resting place of their troops?

Perhaps those barrels on the dockside had an unintended unity within them of Dutch, French, English and Irish as they waited for their final indignity across the water.

Eamon O Fearghail,

Ballybofey, Co Donegal