Enclosure, Baile Na Habha, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
One of two enclosures once recorded here, only one has survived into the present, and that survival is itself part of what makes it worth attention.
The antiquarian T. J. Westropp documented both features, but the enclosure he noted as sitting roughly 35 feet from the entrance has since vanished entirely, leaving its companion as the sole remnant of whatever organised activity once took place at this spot on the Dingle Peninsula.
The surviving enclosure sits at the south-western corner of the interior at Doonroe, known in Irish as An Dún Rua, a place wedged between two narrow sea inlets, Coosatna and Brandon Creek, at the foot of Mount Brandon. It is a sub-circular enclosure, a roughly oval or rounded form that falls just short of a true circle, measuring a maximum of 42 by 36 metres. A possible entrance at the north-east is defined by two upright slabs set just under a metre apart. The enclosing bank itself is low and narrow, built from grass-covered earth and peat mixed with stones, most of which are around 1.5 metres long and less than half a metre high, and notably are set transversely, lying across the width of the bank rather than along it. This arrangement gives the structure an unusual quality; it reads less like a wall built for height or solidity and more like something intended to mark a boundary or contain movement at ground level. At the eastern end of the southern wall, a modern sheep-shelter or turf-shed has been added, a practical intrusion that is not entirely out of keeping with the enclosure's likely original function of managing livestock or defining a working space within a larger settlement. The site was surveyed by J. Cuppage as part of the Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey published in 1986, and that work remains the primary source for understanding what is here and, equally, what has been lost.