Cairn, Uragh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Cairns

Cairn, Uragh, Co. Kerry

On a north-east-facing slope above the valley of Lough Inchiquin in south-west Kerry, a low mound of grass-covered stones barely breaks the surface of the bog.

It is easy to pass by without a second glance, yet this small circular cairn, roughly two and a half metres across and less than a metre high, is a deliberate human construction, ancient enough that the bogland has slowly risen around it over the centuries.

A cairn of this kind is essentially a mound of stones heaped up by people, most commonly in prehistoric times, as a burial marker or territorial signal in the landscape. This one sits four metres east of a relict field wall, itself part of a wider network of old boundaries that once divided the hill pasture here into some kind of managed land. The wall and the cairn together suggest a landscape that was once actively worked and understood by those who lived beside it, long before the bog crept in and softened everything into rough grazing. The stones within the cairn vary in size and shape, which is typical of these informal accumulations, gathered from whatever the immediate ground offered rather than quarried or dressed to any standard.

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Pete F
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