Field boundary, Curraghduff, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Curraghduff, Co. Waterford

On a grass and heather-covered plateau in Curraghduff, County Waterford, a curving stone wall runs for roughly 120 metres before bending southward at each end, creating an arc rather than a closed enclosure. It never completes a full loop, and with two gaps in its length measuring two and three metres wide respectively, it reads less like a conventional field boundary and more like a partial embrace around the landscape. What it was enclosing, or guiding, or sheltering remains quietly open to interpretation.

The wall itself is a stone spread two to four metres wide, with some facing-stones still visible along its length. At the southern end of the arc there is a small cairn, roughly four metres across and no more than half a metre high, built from loose stones. More arresting, perhaps, is what sits at the geometric centre of the curve: faint traces of a circular hut-site, its outer diameter around eight and a half metres, its inner space just under seven metres across. The stone spread that defines it lies so close to the surface that it can be felt underfoot rather than clearly seen. Overlying part of the wall itself is a booley hut, a rectangular structure measuring about 8.6 by 3.4 metres. Booley huts were the temporary shelters used by those who practised booleying, the seasonal movement of livestock to upland pastures in summer, a practice once widespread across Ireland. The presence of a booley hut built directly on top of an older boundary wall suggests the plateau was visited and revisited across very different periods, each generation making use of what the last had left behind, without necessarily understanding or caring about its original purpose.

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Pete F
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