Enclosure, Baile Dháith, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Baile Dháith, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern slopes of Ballydavid Head in County Kerry, in ground that stays wet and marshy underfoot, sits a small circular earthwork that is easy to walk past and easier still to misread as a natural feature.

It measures just 6.8 metres across internally, making it barely large enough to shelter a handful of people, and the earthen bank that defines it survives to a height of 1.77 metres on the outside while dropping to only 0.75 metres on the inside. On the eastern side it has been worn down further still, to a mere 0.2 metres, and a later field wall running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east has been built directly over it, folding the ancient boundary into the more recent agricultural landscape without ceremony. A narrow gap of around 0.6 metres in the south-east section may represent the original entrance.

Two low stone mounds project inward from the western portion of the bank, each between one and two metres long and roughly 0.4 metres high. Their purpose is not recorded, but their placement suggests they were structural rather than incidental, perhaps the footings of internal fittings or supports. Circular enclosures of this kind, defined by an earthen bank and sometimes accompanied by an internal ditch, appear throughout early medieval Ireland and were used for a range of purposes, from domestic settlement and stock management to more specialised ritual or ceremonial functions. The site at Baile Dháith, the Irish form of the townland name meaning Davitt's townland, was documented by J. Cuppage as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986 under the auspices of Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne. The Dingle Peninsula is unusually dense with early monuments, and this enclosure sits within that broader pattern even as it remains one of its quieter, less-examined examples.

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