Enclosure, Deelis, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Deelis, Co. Kerry

On the lower northern slopes of Lackabane Mountain in south-west Kerry, a low grass-covered ring in the rough hill pasture looks at first like any number of ancient enclosures scattered across the Irish landscape.

It is only when you notice how the ground has been carefully engineered, cut into the slope on the southern side and built up on the northern, to create a perfectly level interior, that you begin to suspect this was not a place where people lived or buried their dead, but where they worked at something precise and demanding. The circle, roughly 8.8 metres across, is defined by a bank of earth and stone about 1.3 metres wide, with stones still protruding through the grass on the southern to north-western arc. Rushes fill the interior now.

The enclosure was used as a charcoal-making site in the early eighteenth century, its output feeding the furnace at Lauragh Upper. Charcoal production required a flat, controlled surface on which timber could be stacked into a carefully managed mound, covered with earth or turf to restrict airflow, and slowly burned over several days. The level floor was not incidental to the design but central to it; uneven ground would have made the process difficult to control. The connection to Lauragh Upper places this small earthwork within the context of the iron industry that operated in parts of Kerry during that period, drawing on local timber and ore, and leaving behind sites like this one that have since been absorbed back into the hillside almost without trace.

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Pete F
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