Enclosure, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the south-east-facing slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a rough circle of collapsed stone sits in open hill pasture, easy to walk past and easier still to misread as a natural tumble of rock.

It is in fact a small enclosure, roughly 6.8 metres east to west and 6.2 metres north to south, defined by what was once a drystone wall, a wall built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful stacking of stone. That wall has long since fallen, leaving a low spread of rubble no more than 0.3 metres high in places, with loose stones scattered across the grassy interior, which tilts gently downhill toward the south-east. A possible entrance gap survives on that same south-east side.

Enclosures of this kind, circular and drystone-built, appear widely across upland Ireland and are generally understood to have served as small agricultural or domestic spaces, sometimes acting as animal pens, sometimes associated with seasonal settlement. What gives this particular example a degree of interest is its immediate context: a hut site lies just 17 metres to the south-west. Hut sites, the remains of simple roofed structures once used for habitation or shelter, often appear in clusters or in close association with enclosures, and that proximity here hints at a small unit of past activity on the mountain, even if the date and precise function of either structure remain unresolved.

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Pete F
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