Enclosure, Ballyhar, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
In the deciduous plantation on the northern bank of the Glanooragh river, north of Killarney, there may be a small enclosure that nobody has properly seen.
The word "may" is doing genuine work here. The low earthen remains were never fully inspected, the approach was blocked by a deep land drain running north to south between a firebreak and the forestry, and modern aerial photography shows only a canopy of trees where the feature should be. It does not appear on any historic maps. What we have, essentially, is an archaeological site that is known mainly by its elusiveness.
The feature came to light in 2000, when Michael Connolly, County Archaeologist for Kerry County Council, was assessing a forty square mile area north of Killarney to help determine a suitable road route. That kind of landscape-scale survey often turns up things that more targeted fieldwork would miss, and this was one of them. Connolly recorded it as the low remains of a small enclosure, a category of site that in an Irish context typically refers to a roughly circular or oval earthwork, the kind that might once have defined a farmstead, a ceremonial space, or a boundary of some kind. He got to within about forty-five metres of the grid reference he had been given, approaching through a firebreak to the west, but a deep drain cut off closer access. By the time aerial photography was checked, the plantation had grown dense enough to obscure whatever lay beneath.
