Field boundary, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the south-west-facing slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a drystone wall has largely given up the effort of being a wall.

What remains is a series of upright stones appearing at irregular intervals across the rough, heather-covered ground, the collapsed sections reduced to low rubble between them. At around a metre in original height, it would never have been a particularly imposing structure, but its interest lies less in the wall itself than in what it connects, and what it tells us about people who once worked this exposed, sloping ground.

The wall begins roughly 80 metres south-east of an enclosure and two hut sites, those small stone-built shelters associated with seasonal or permanent habitation in early medieval and later pastoral Ireland. It meanders southward, curving downslope to the south-west for some 200 metres before it ends. Along the way, it does something that field archaeology occasionally turns up and always finds worth noting: the eastern side of another hut site has been physically incorporated into the wall's fabric, meaning whoever built or extended this boundary simply used a pre-existing structure as a convenient building block. A further hut site sits approximately 28 metres north of the wall's northern terminus. The overall picture is of a small agricultural landscape, a cluster of habitation and enclosure spread across the hillside, connected and partly defined by this wandering boundary.

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Pete F
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