Field system, Ballahacommane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Ballahacommane, Co. Kerry

On the south-west-facing slopes of a ridge in Ballahacommane, County Kerry, a field system roughly 300 metres square lies almost entirely swallowed by vegetation.

The stone walls that once organised this landscape into working agricultural units are still there, but only just: collapsed, overgrown, and visible in any detail only when seen from above. It was an aerial photograph taken in 1989 that brought the full extent of the system into focus, revealing a coherent arrangement of boundaries and enclosures that ground-level survey alone would struggle to piece together.

The north-east boundary of the system is marked by a curvilinear stone wall, the kind built without mortar by placing stones directly against one another, which runs roughly south-east to north-west for approximately 240 metres before curving gradually south-west for a further 100 metres. A shorter spur branches off to the south-south-west at the wall's north-west end. About 50 metres inward from this outer boundary, further collapsed drystone walls divide the interior into at least four roughly rectangular fields and three irregular ones. Some of these inner walls were already recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1846, which suggests the system was still legible, if not necessarily still active, at that point in the nineteenth century. Faint traces of cultivation ridges running north-east to south-west were noted within the fields, the kind of parallel earthwork left by traditional spade or plough tillage. A separate enclosure occupies the south-west quadrant of the system.

The site looks south towards Mangerton Mountain, and the rough pasture that has reclaimed it now makes any clear reading of the walls difficult from the ground. The 1989 aerial photograph remains the clearest single record of what the system actually looks like in its entirety.

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Pete F
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