Enclosure, Gowlanes, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Gowlanes, Co. Kerry

Deep in a Coillte forestry holding at Gowlanes East in County Kerry, nine small circular enclosures sit within roughly 200 metres of one another, quietly resisting easy explanation.

They are modest things: each measures around six metres across on average, formed either by a ring of boulders or stones, or by a low bank of peat, with a shallow external fosse, which is essentially a ditch running around the outside of the platform. Individually, a person might walk past one without pausing. Nine of them, clustered together in a forested upland, is another matter.

Known as the Fionnán enclosures, these features share a strikingly consistent morphology, each one a circular raised platform contained within its surrounding ditch. The repetition across the group suggests they were not accidental or incidental but formed part of some deliberate arrangement, though precisely what purpose they served remains unclear. Enclosures of this general type appear across Ireland in various forms and periods, sometimes associated with early settlement, with land division, or with ritual activity, but without excavation it is difficult to say more about these particular examples. What is notable here is the concentration and uniformity: nine features, all broadly alike, dispersed across a relatively compact stretch of ground that has since been absorbed into commercial forestry.

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