Enclosure, Boulerdah, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Boulerdah, Co. Kerry

On a westerly spur of Been Hill in County Kerry, just east of the summit of Meelin, a low stone enclosure sits in open mountain pasture with unobstructed views in every direction.

It is a quietly puzzling structure: roughly oval in plan, measuring about 12.4 metres north to south and 17.6 metres east to west internally, its boundary wall built from boulders laid both upright and horizontally. The wall reaches only a metre in height at its tallest point, and the interior has become thoroughly overgrown, offering no obvious clues about what the space was once used for. Two large upright slabs frame an entrance gap of just over two metres on the eastern side, though considerable collapse around them makes the threshold hard to read clearly.

What makes the site stranger on closer inspection is the cluster of elements that surround it without quite explaining it. Against the outer face of the enclosure wall at the south, the foundations of a small circular hut survive, its walls built of flat slabs, with natural rock outcrop incorporated into its base at the southeast. The hut is modest, measuring only 2.5 metres across internally, the kind of temporary shelter associated with seasonal upland farming or transhumance, the old practice of moving livestock to higher ground in summer. A short distance to the east of the hut, roughly 2.5 metres away, two further upright slabs stand orientated east to west. Their purpose has not been determined. The enclosure itself was recorded as a circular enclosure on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, which places its recognition in the nineteenth century at least, but the site's origins and function remain open questions. Archaeological survey work on the Iveragh Peninsula, published in 1996 by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, documented the structure without resolving what it was built for or when.

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Pete F
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