Enclosure, Cappagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cappagh, Co. Kerry

On a south-westerly slope above the Sheen River valley in County Kerry, a circle of old drystone walling sits quietly in rough pasture, grass creeping over its low courses.

It is easy to walk past without registering what it is: a small circular enclosure, eleven metres across, its walls no higher than your knee, its entrance gap barely wide enough to pass through sideways. Yet the care taken in its construction is visible in the details. Whoever built it did not simply pile stones on the hillside; they cut into the upslope on the north-east side and raised the south-west portion of the floor to compensate, so that the interior ended up level. A single slab defines part of the southern edge of the entrance. The result is a modest but deliberate piece of engineering.

Enclosures of this kind, sometimes called ring enclosures or cashel-type structures depending on their construction, are a recurring feature of the Kerry landscape. They could serve as small farmsteads, stock enclosures, or the foundations of a single dwelling, and they are notoriously difficult to date without excavation. What can be said about this one is that it did not exist in isolation. A relict field boundary, the kind of low earthwork that marks the edge of a long-abandoned agricultural plot, abuts the enclosure on its north-east side, suggesting it was once part of a worked landscape rather than a solitary structure. Roughly sixty metres to the north-west, a hut site sits on the same slope, raising the possibility that the two formed part of the same small settlement or farming unit, their inhabitants looking out over the same river valley.

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