Enclosure, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
At the head of Com an Lochaigh, close to the northern bank of the Feohanagh river, a scatter of stones sits in a state so ruined and disordered that even identifying what it once was requires careful qualification.
What survives here is tentatively read as two conjoined huts alongside a small enclosure, though the remains are too confused to be certain. That uncertainty is itself part of what makes the site quietly compelling: the ground holds something, but it refuses to give it up cleanly.
The site sits within the Corca Dhuibhne region of the Dingle Peninsula, an area of exceptional archaeological density where early settlement evidence is woven into the landscape at almost every turn. The remains were recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey, a landmark publication produced by Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne that catalogued the extraordinary concentration of prehistoric and early historic monuments across the peninsula. The two possible hut structures, if that is indeed what they are, would likely belong to a tradition of dry-stone building common in this part of Kerry, where small circular or sub-rectangular shelters and their associated enclosures, used for habitation or for managing livestock, appear in remote valley heads and on hillside terraces throughout the region.