Enclosure, Beginish, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Beginish, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern edge of Beginish Island, just below the last modern field boundary, four shallow circular hollows sit in the ground with almost no fanfare.

They are easy to miss, and easier still to dismiss as natural undulations in the landscape. But their arrangement, spacing, and flat or saucer-shaped interiors suggest something more deliberate, the remnants of enclosures whose original purpose has not been firmly established.

The four depressions are arranged in two pairs. The northerly pair sit roughly 2.4 metres apart, while a second pair lies about 12 metres to the south, spaced 6 metres from one another. The best-preserved of the four is the north-western depression, measuring approximately 3.75 metres north to south and 3.4 metres east to west, with a flat-bottomed interior that sits around 0.3 metres below the surrounding ground level. Its neighbour to the north-east retains a low external bank along its eastern side, averaging 0.65 metres wide and 0.2 metres high, which is the kind of slight earthwork that hints at a once more defined boundary. The south-eastern depression is the most degraded of the group, its interior largely filled with beach stones, while the south-western example has a more gently curved, saucer-shaped floor and traces of a possible bank along its southern edge. The survey that recorded these features places them midway between two points on the island known as Cruppaunroe and Canroe. Their dimensions, each roughly 3 metres across, are modest, and the clustering of four within a relatively small area raises questions about whether they functioned together or represent activity at different periods. Beginish, a small island off the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, is already known for early medieval remains, which gives even these ambiguous hollows a suggestive context, though no firm date has been assigned to them.

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