Field boundary, Derreengarrinshagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Derreengarrinshagh, Co. Kerry

On a east-facing slope in the Kerry uplands, a low curved wall barely breaks the surface of the bog.

It is only about thirty centimetres high in places, grass-covered and partly swallowed by the ground, yet it runs for roughly twenty-eight metres across a sheltered hollow, and it is not alone. Three hut sites sit within the arc it traces, tucked into the landscape as if the wall were an arm drawn around them.

The wall at Derreengarrinshagh curves on a northwest-to-southeast axis, its thickness of around sixty-five centimetres suggesting solid, deliberate construction rather than a casual clearance heap. It sits on rough hill pasture above the valley of the Dromoghty River, protected to the north and south by natural ridges of outcropping rock that would have broken the wind and marked out this hollow as a workable, liveable space. The three hut sites it encloses are typical of the kind of small seasonal or permanent settlement that once dotted the upland margins of south-west Kerry, where communities grazed animals and farmed the edges of viable land. Loose stones scattered on the downslope hint at a structure that has been shedding itself slowly over centuries, surrendering material to gravity and to the bog that has crept up around it.

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Pete F
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