Enclosure, Baurearagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On a south-facing slope at Baurearagh in south-west Kerry, a small drystone enclosure sits in rough pasture with a quiet stubbornness that rewards close attention.
It is compact, just over five metres east to west and a little under four and a half metres north to south, with rounded corners that soften what would otherwise be a strictly rectangular plan. The walls stand 1.4 metres high and are roughly 0.7 metres thick, built without mortar in the drystone tradition, where carefully selected and stacked stones hold one another in place through weight and friction alone. A narrow entrance, less than a metre wide, is set at the north-west corner, an unusual position that immediately raises questions about how the structure was used and by whom.
What makes the enclosure more than simply a field boundary is the care taken to manage the slope beneath it. The southern portion of the interior is raised, while the northern portion has been deliberately cut into the hillside, effectively levelling the ground within. Someone, at some point, went to considerable trouble to create a flat working surface inside these walls. A secondary wall, crudely built and running east to west, extends roughly seven metres outward from the north-west corner, suggesting the enclosure was once part of a small complex of connected spaces rather than an isolated structure. The date and function of the whole arrangement remain unrecorded; drystone enclosures of this kind in Kerry can belong to almost any period, and without excavation, confident attribution is not possible. Forestry plantation now presses in from the west and south, altering the landscape around it considerably from whatever it once looked like.