Enclosure, Derrylahan, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On a north-facing ridge in Derrylahan, hemmed in by bog on either side, sits a low enclosure that resists easy explanation.
Roughly sixty metres from east to west and forty metres from north to south, it is defined by a wall barely a metre high, built from large stones, random rubble, and sections of compacted earth and stone. The wall is broken in numerous places, particularly along its western and northern sides, giving the whole thing a ragged, incomplete appearance that makes its original purpose difficult to read at a glance.
Enclosures of this kind, essentially enclosed areas of land bounded by a constructed wall or bank, appear across Ireland in many forms and from many periods, and dating them without excavation is rarely straightforward. What makes this one quietly interesting is its relationship to the landscape around it. The ground it occupies is rough pasture, caught between bog to the north and bog to the south, on a slope that would have offered limited agricultural appeal. Immediately to the south lies a field system dated to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, suggesting that organised land use was active in the vicinity during that period, though whether the enclosure itself belongs to that era or to something considerably older remains an open question. The irregular outline of the wall and its mixed construction, combining large stones with rubble and earthen sections, gives it a somewhat improvised quality, though that alone tells us little about when it was built or what it was meant to contain.