Field boundary, Cappagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Cappagh, Co. Kerry

On a south-west-facing slope above the valley of the Sheen River in County Kerry, a stretch of old field wall disappears into the bog as though it simply gave up.

That quiet vanishing act is precisely what makes it interesting. The wall is a relict boundary, meaning it was abandoned long enough ago that the landscape has partially swallowed it, leaving behind something between a ruin and a geological feature, easy to overlook and easy to misread as a natural ridge of stone.

The boundary runs for around fifty metres in a westerly direction from a point just north-west of an associated hut site, then curves southward for a further sixty metres before the bog takes over. The construction technique in the earlier east-west section is worth noting: rather than being built from horizontally laid rubble in the usual fashion, the wall incorporates non-contiguous upright slabs, their long axes running in line with the boundary itself. This orthostatic style, in which stones are set on end rather than stacked flat, is an older tradition found in field systems across the west of Ireland, and it gives the wall a slightly skeletal appearance where it still stands to a height of around 0.8 metres and a width of 0.6 metres. The south-westerly section is lower, reaching no more than 0.5 metres at its highest point. A second relict boundary survives roughly seventy metres to the east-south-east, suggesting this was once part of a wider pattern of enclosure on the hillside rather than an isolated effort.

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Pete F
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