Field system, Inchicloon, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On a west-facing slope above the valley of the Dromoghty River in south-west Kerry, a network of ancient field walls lies half-swallowed by bog.
The walls themselves are not dramatic objects; they reach only about forty centimetres above the surface where they are visible at all, and for much of their length they have sunk entirely beneath the peat, leaving only a ghost of the agricultural landscape they once organised. What makes the site quietly arresting is its scale, an irregular area stretching roughly three hundred metres from north-east to south-west and about a hundred metres across, and the fact that the walls follow curving, organic lines rather than the straight boundaries of later land enclosure. Rubble from their collapsed upper courses is now embedded in the bog itself, effectively preserved in place.
Relict field systems of this kind are the submerged record of farming communities who worked the uplands before the bog expanded to cover them. The process was gradual, driven by climatic deterioration and centuries of soil exhaustion, and it happened across much of the Irish uplands during the prehistoric and early medieval periods, though the precise date of any particular system is often difficult to pin down without excavation. At Inchicloon the walls are most legible where the bog has been cut away for fuel, exposing the stonework that lies beneath the undisturbed surface. Within the field network there is also a separate enclosure, a bounded space whose function, whether for livestock, habitation, or ritual, is not recorded. The walls themselves are built to modest but purposeful dimensions, about sixty-five centimetres thick, suggesting a working landscape rather than a defensive one.