Ecclesiastical enclosure, Long Island, Co. Kerry

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Long Island, Co. Kerry

A narrow strip of land barely seventy metres across at its widest point, Long Island, or Oileán Fada, sits at the southern edge of the entrance to Portmagee Channel off the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, separated from the mainland by Garraunagh Sound.

It is the kind of place that rewards the effort of reaching it not with dramatic monuments but with something quieter and stranger: the compressed remains of an early ecclesiastical settlement, pressed into a subcircular enclosure just above the island's natural slipway, as though the whole community were arranged for a quick departure.

The enclosure measures roughly 27.5 metres north to south and 35.5 metres east to west internally, defined by a broad bank of earth and stone that still stands around 0.7 metres high on its external face and reaches up to 4.5 metres wide on the western side. A leacht, in early Irish monastic tradition a small commemorative or devotional cairn, is among the features recorded within, alongside two huts, a possible oratory, a small internal enclosure, and a burial area. The interior slopes noticeably downward to the east. Erosion above the low cliff face has damaged sections of the bank from the northeast around to the south, but stretches of rough drystone facing survive on the outer flank both here and at the west. Quantities of charcoal are visible in the eroded eastern face of the bank, hinting at activity whose precise character remains uncertain. At the northern side, a small entrance is formed by upright slabs placed roughly 0.6 metres apart, while a 4.5-metre row of upright slabs at the southeast appears to have marked the western side of a separate entrance leading directly up from the landing place below, a practical arrangement that speaks to the island's logic of arrival and enclosure.

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