Enclosure, Behaghane, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Behaghane, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slope of Coad Mountain above the Kenmare River, there is an enclosure whose banks may owe more to natural geology than to any deliberate act of construction.

That ambiguity is part of what makes the site quietly interesting. A gravel mound to the north-west appears to have been shaped and possibly hollowed out to create the western and northern banks, blurring the line between landscape modification and earthwork in a way that raises more questions than it answers.

The enclosure appears on the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as an irregular area of roughly thirty metres by thirty metres, and again on the 1896 edition, by which point it is recorded as a D-shaped feature, approximately twenty metres north-east to south-west, with a straight north-eastern side running about forty metres. That straight edge corresponds to a field boundary, suggesting that the enclosure's outline had already begun to merge with the working agricultural landscape by the time mapmakers were noting it. An aerial photograph taken in 1954 confirms the D-shape and shows a vague trace of the structure beyond the field boundary. The nature of the enclosure, whether it was a settlement enclosure, a livestock pound, or something earlier and less easily categorised, remains unresolved. When a house was built within it and monitoring was carried out during the foundation work in 2002, flecks of charcoal were found in the clay about a metre below ground level. Excavator Ní Loingsigh noted that these might indicate activity connected to the enclosure, but the material was left in place and the ground level raised rather than investigated further. It is the kind of discovery that enlarges the mystery rather than closing it.

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