Enclosure, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern slopes of Geokaun, the highest point on Valentia Island, there is an ancient enclosure that does not appear on any Ordnance Survey map.

That absence is itself suggestive: here is a site that has slipped through the cartographic record entirely, its modest earthworks overlooking Valencia Harbour and the Portmagee Channel without any official acknowledgement that it exists at all.

What remains is considerably disturbed, yet enough survives to read the original shape of the place. The enclosure was roughly subcircular, a form common in early medieval Irish settlement, where a circular or oval bank of earth defined a farmstead or more ceremonial space. Most of the enclosing bank has been levelled, but in the southern sector a stretch still stands, measuring around 1.3 metres wide at its base and rising just over a metre above the surrounding ground. Inside, the ground level was deliberately raised to counteract the natural southward slope of the hillside, which tells us that whoever built this put genuine effort into levelling a usable interior. The enclosed area measured approximately 25 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, making it a modest but not insignificant space. The archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, recorded the site as entry number 747, drawing attention to these quietly legible details within an otherwise battered landscape.

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Pete F
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