Enclosure, Derrysallagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On a south-east-facing slope in Derrysallagh, County Kerry, there is a small circular enclosure that reveals, on closer inspection, a quiet piece of practical ancient engineering.
The structure is only about thirteen metres across, yet whoever built it went to considerable trouble to make the ground inside perfectly level despite the hillside beneath it. The south-east portion of the interior was built up by roughly thirty centimetres, while the north-west portion was cut down into the slope by about half a metre, the two adjustments cancelling each other out to produce a flat working surface.
The wall that defines the enclosure is constructed in a manner not often seen in such modest structures. Rather than a simple rubble bank, it has an inner and an outer facing of upright stone slabs set side by side, with the space between them packed with earth and smaller stones, giving a width of around 1.4 metres and a surviving height of about 0.8 metres. A single large slab, 1.2 metres wide, marks one side of the original entrance on the south-east. The wall survives best from the west around to the north-east; the stretch running from north-east down to south-east is lower and heavily grassed over, and the section between south-east and west has partly collapsed. Within the enclosure, a second smaller enclosure sits in the southern half, suggesting the site may have been subdivided or adapted at some point in its history, though the precise sequence and dating remain unclear. Enclosures of this general kind, sometimes called ring forts or cashels depending on their construction, were a common form of farmstead and small settlement across early medieval Ireland, used to define a domestic or agricultural space and provide some degree of protection for livestock.