Enclosure, Scarteen, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Scarteen, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Knockleama in south-west Kerry, a small collapsed wall traces out a D-shaped outline in the rough hill grazing, easy to miss unless you are already looking for it.

The flat northern edge runs for about ten and a half metres; the curved remainder encloses an area roughly six and a half metres across from north to south. The stone wall that once defined it has tumbled to little more than half a metre in height and about the same in width, blending into the surrounding landscape with the patient anonymity of something very old.

Enclosures of this kind are common across Kerry's uplands, though their precise origins and functions are often difficult to pin down. Some served as livestock pens, others as small farmsteads or garden plots attached to long-abandoned settlements; the D-shaped plan, with its characteristic straight side, is a form that recurs throughout early Irish land use. This particular example sits within a wider field system on the hillside, and a second enclosure lies roughly sixteen metres to the north-east, suggesting the two features were once part of the same organised use of the land. The interior still slopes gently downward to the south, and a field wall from a later period abuts the site at its north-west corner, the kind of detail that points to centuries of overlapping activity on the same ground. Below, the valley of the Blackwater River opens out towards Kenmare Bay, a view that would have looked broadly familiar to whoever first built these walls.

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Pete F
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