Field boundary, Erneen, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Barrerneen in County Kerry, a series of old stone walls emerges from the bog in fragments, curving across rough hill pasture in patterns that no longer quite make sense from ground level.

The walls have largely collapsed, their rubble scattered downslope, and the bog has slowly risen around what remains, leaving only the lower courses visible above the surface. What is left spans an area of roughly 250 metres east to west and 230 metres north to south, a considerable footprint for something so easy to overlook.

Within this network of field boundaries, eight separate hut sites have been identified, suggesting that this was once a working agricultural settlement rather than a simple enclosure for livestock. The curvilinear form of the walls is typical of early field systems found across Ireland, where boundaries followed the natural contours of the land rather than the straight lines that came with later land reorganisation. The bog has acted as both destroyer and preserver here, gradually swallowing the upper courses of the walls while sealing the lower ones against the kind of stone-robbing that has stripped so many similar sites elsewhere. Exactly when the settlement was active is not recorded, but the combination of field walls and hut platforms points to a community that farmed and lived at this elevation before the land was abandoned to pasture and peat.

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Pete F
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