Enclosure, Tuar Sáilín, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tuar Sáilín, Co. Kerry

At Tuar Sáilín in County Kerry, a small D-shaped enclosure sits just to the west of a farm track, its flat side running parallel to the path as though the two were always meant to accompany one another.

The shape itself is the first curiosity. Most early enclosures in Ireland are roughly circular or oval, forming the familiar outline of a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that tens of thousands of Irish families occupied from the early medieval period onward. A D-shape suggests either an adaptation to the local terrain or, more intriguingly, a deliberate design whose original purpose is no longer obvious.

The structure is built of drystone walling, a technique requiring no mortar, relying instead on the careful fitting of stones against one another for stability, with larger boulders incorporated at various points throughout. Internally, the enclosure measures 6 metres east to west, while the straight northern to southern side runs to 11 metres. That straight side tells its own quiet story: it has clearly been reused in more recent times and built up to a maximum height of 1.5 metres, meaning that at some point a farmer or landowner found the old wall useful and simply added to it rather than starting again. It is a practical decision that was probably made without much thought, yet it has layered two distinct periods of construction onto a single stretch of stone.

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