Field system, Ballymacthomas, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Ballymacthomas, Co. Kerry

At Ballymacthomas in County Kerry, a low-lying maze of earthen banks, mounds, and hollows sits atop a limestone outcrop, largely overlooked by the farmed and reclaimed land that now surrounds it.

What makes the site quietly arresting is the way a modern north-to-south field boundary cuts straight through the middle of it, bisecting an ancient arrangement of earthworks that long predates whatever fencing or drainage scheme carved up the land in more recent centuries. The old and the new share the same ground, with little acknowledgement of the meeting.

The remains themselves are modest in height but legible in outline. The most substantial bank, lying to the east of that dividing field boundary, runs for roughly 75 metres and reaches a maximum width of six metres, though it rises only about 35 centimetres above the surrounding surface. It is built from a mixture of earth and stone, typical of field systems where builders used whatever the local ground offered. To the west of the boundary, a series of interconnecting banks forms a more intricate pattern. The most prominent of these runs east to west for 35 metres before terminating at the field fence, where it meets a second bank running north to south for 25 metres. Together these earthworks suggest a system of enclosure or land division, the kind of organised landscape management that communities across Ireland practised for centuries, parcelling ground for cultivation, grazing, or settlement. Michael Connolly recorded the complex during a survey of the Lee Valley area carried out between 1996 and 1997, at which point much of the broader landscape around the site had already been substantially altered by agricultural reclamation.

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