Field system, Murrooghkilly, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In the bogland of Murrooghkilly in County Clare, a series of low field walls runs across the landscape in a mostly north-north-east to south-south-west alignment, visible not so much on the ground as from the air.
Aerial photography reveals a pattern of boundaries that, at first glance, looks like the skeletal remains of an organised agricultural landscape, the kind of field system that once divided and managed land across much of rural Ireland.
The site was first noted in 1996, when Christine Grant flagged the possible field system, and it was formally recorded in the Record of Monuments and Places that same year. What makes the interpretation here tentative rather than settled is the relationship between the field walls and the turf stands nearby. Turf stands are areas of cutaway bog where peat has been harvested, often over many generations, and the large number of them in this area raises a reasonable question about chronology. Some of the walls appear to be directly associated with the turf stands, which means the field boundaries and the peat-cutting activity may belong to the same broad period of land use, though precisely when that was remains unclear. The alignment of the walls, consistent and deliberate-looking, hints at a planned arrangement rather than ad hoc boundaries thrown up over time, but without further investigation the date and function of the system stay open questions.