Enclosure, Canagullen, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Canagullen, Co. Kerry

On a break in an east-facing slope above the valley of the Glanmore River, a circular enclosure sits in rough hill pasture, so faint in the landscape that it could easily be mistaken for a natural irregularity in the ground.

It measures only eight metres in diameter, and its defining bank, where it survives at all, rises no more than ten centimetres above the surrounding surface and extends perhaps eighty centimetres in width. The clearest traces run along the northwest and southeast arcs; elsewhere the outline is intermittent, eroded by centuries of grazing and weather.

What gives the site its quiet interest is partly in its construction. The southwest portion of the interior has been cut roughly a metre into the hillside, while the northeast side has been built up about forty centimetres on the exterior, a technique of levelling a sloping site that is characteristic of small enclosed structures, likely domestic or agricultural in purpose, from the early medieval period in Ireland. Forty metres to the east lies a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stones beside a trough, often fed by a natural spring or stream, and used for heating water. Fulachta fia are among the most common archaeological monuments in Kerry, and their proximity to small enclosures is not unusual, though the relationship between the two sites here is not fully understood. The pairing does suggest, at minimum, that this hillside above Glanmore was in active use over a considerable stretch of time.

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Pete F
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