Enclosure, Ballynakilla, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballynakilla, Co. Cork

On the south-facing hillslopes of Bere Island, a ring of stone slabs juts through the surface of a bog, enclosing a circle just over five metres across.

The slabs are set contiguously, edge to edge, and the largest among them, a recumbent stone measuring 1.8 metres long, lies at the southern side. Moving westward and north-eastward, the line of slabs becomes intermittent, swallowed by deeper bog, so that only portions of the enclosure's outline remain legible at the surface.

Enclosures of this kind, formed from upright or partially upright stone settings, are found across Ireland in various forms, sometimes associated with settlement, sometimes with livestock management, and sometimes with purposes that remain genuinely unclear. What gives this particular example its quiet interest is its setting and its company. Two hut sites, the kind of modest stone-walled structures associated with early rural habitation, lie close by: one roughly ten metres to the south, another approximately seventy metres to the west-south-west. Together, the three features suggest a cluster of activity on these rough grazing grounds, though when that activity took place and precisely what the enclosure was meant to contain or demarcate is not recorded. The bog, which has grown to obscure much of the stonework, preserves the remains even as it hides them.

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Pete F
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