Enclosure, Inchincoosh, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Inchincoosh, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope in the rough hill pasture of Inchincoosh in County Kerry, a small circular enclosure sits right at the edge of a spur, where the ground drops away and the horizon opens up.

It is not a dramatic ruin by any conventional measure, just a collapsed ring of drystone walling, barely half a metre high in places, with a narrow entrance gap on the south-east side. But the position is deliberate and the construction careful enough that someone, at some point, chose this particular shelf of hillside with intention.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring 8.5 metres east to west and 8.2 metres north to south, with a wall that was originally around 0.9 metres thick. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful stacking and interlocking of stones, was the standard building method for field boundaries, enclosures, and small habitations across early medieval Ireland and beyond. Here, the builders made practical use of what the landscape offered: outcropping bedrock along the south and south-west arc of the wall has been incorporated directly into the structure, reducing the labour of quarrying and carrying loose stone. The entrance, just 0.8 metres wide, faces south-east. Loose stones are scattered both inside the enclosure and around its exterior, the gradual result of collapse over centuries. Roughly 50 metres to the south-west lies a hut site, suggesting this small enclosure was not an isolated feature but part of a modest cluster of activity on the hillside, perhaps a field boundary or animal pen associated with whoever sheltered in that nearby structure.

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Pete F
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