Enclosure, Ballydunlea, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballydunlea, Co. Kerry

On a gently sloping hillside in Ballydunlea, Co. Kerry, a large earthen bank stretches 34 metres in an east-west line before curving into a horseshoe shape, enclosing a space whose original purpose remains quietly unclear.

Earthen enclosures of this kind are scattered across the Irish countryside and may have served any number of functions over the centuries, from livestock management to settlement boundaries, though without excavation it is rarely possible to say which. What gives this particular feature its character is less what it contains than where it sits.

The site occupies two large amalgamated fields on a hillside that opens broadly to the east, west, and south, with the Slieve Mish mountains filling the southern horizon. That orientation, and the quality of the views it commands, suggests the location was not chosen casually. The earthen bank and its curved terminal were recorded by Michael Connolly as part of a survey of the Lee Valley area carried out in 1996 and 1997, one of many such features documented quietly across Kerry during that period without ever quite attracting wider attention.

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Pete F
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