Enclosure, Gortlahard, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Gortlahard, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope above the valley of the Sheen River in County Kerry, a wall that has been mostly swallowed by peat still traces the outline of an ancient enclosure.

What makes the site quietly peculiar is the way it hovers between presence and absence: the collapsed stone boundary, only about half a metre thick and protruding barely forty centimetres above the bog surface, disappears intermittently beneath the peat cover, as though the ground is in the process of reclaiming it. The enclosure itself is irregular in shape, stretching roughly ninety metres north to south and sixty metres east to west, which makes it a substantial feature even in its degraded state.

The surrounding rough pasture and the creeping peat give few obvious clues about when the enclosure was built or what it contained. What adds an intriguing dimension is the presence of a fulacht fia approximately eighty metres to the south-east. A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site, typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and shattered stone beside a trough, where water was heated using fire-cracked rocks. They are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though their precise function remains a matter of debate. The proximity of the two features does not establish a connection, but it does suggest that this particular slope above the Sheen valley saw sustained human activity over a long period. Adding another layer of complexity, a modern east-to-west field boundary now bisects the enclosure, slicing across whatever original coherence it once had.

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Pete F
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