Ballykeel is between Crossnacreevy and Moneyreagh villages and is just under 1 square mile or 589 acres in size.
In Irish, Ballykeel is An Baile Caol with caol meaning a narrow or marshy stream, therefore translating as 'place of the narrow stream' with a number of small streams still present today (or at least according to Google maps).
Two archaeological sites are noted within Ballykeel- an Enclosure (DOW010:011) & a Rath (DOW009:020) of unknown age, both appear on early OS maps however both were also destroyed before they could be properly studied/recorded.
Two more recent archaeological sites from the Second World War within Ballykeel have been Scheduled for Protection (DOW:009:101 & 102) which relate to two surviving Starfish (or Special Fire) Control Shelters. This site can be see on the right with the yellow dots representing the location of fire decoys (now removed) and the two red dots representing the scheduled control shelters.
Starfish sites could be found all over the British Isles, and were basically a series of dummy decoy fires which were intended to draw enemy fire from intended targets. These fires would be arranged and lit sequentially so as to look from the air like factories, airfield or towns etc that had been hit and set alight by incendiaries, thus encouraging enemy bombers above to further assault the fake targets. Belfast was bombed 4 nights in April & May 1941, the city and it's people were devasted with over 50% of the housing stock damaged and nearly 1000 recorded deaths. If you'd like to learn more about starfish sites you can watch this RAF training film called 'Visual Deception'. This clip, from the Imperial War Museum Collection, shows how fires could be used as decoys as well as information about Starfish decoy sites to give an idea of how sites such as Ballykeel would have been operated.
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