Field system, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry

On the eastern slopes of a low ridge at the head of Com an Lochaigh in County Kerry, a scatter of old field boundaries encloses a remarkably compressed record of human activity.

Within this single field system, at the point where the ridge meets the valley floor, there is a clochaun, a souterrain, a cross-inscribed stone, and a probable burial ground, each belonging to different chapters of use and abandonment, yet all gathered within the same rough landscape of enclosures and walls.

The clochaun, a drystone corbelled structure of early medieval type common to the Dingle Peninsula, sits alongside the souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically associated with nearby settlement and used variously for storage or refuge. The cross-inscribed stone and the probable burial ground suggest that this corner of Com an Lochaigh carried some devotional or funerary significance, though the exact chronology of each element is not fully resolved. Elsewhere in the same system, three further huts have been recorded, along with crudely-built structures and enclosures that are thought to reflect later sheep-farming activity in the area. A ruined house of probable post-medieval date adds one more layer. The site was recorded and described by J. Cuppage in the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986.

The place is not a monument in any formal sense but rather a loose accumulation of evidence, each structure quietly legible to anyone willing to read the ground. The cross-inscribed stone is perhaps the most arresting single object, the kind of simple carving that can be easy to pass over in upland terrain where field boundaries and collapsed walls blur into one another.

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Pete F
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