Enclosure, Cinn Aird Thiar, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula, in the townland of Cinn Aird Thiar, there is a patch of rough, uncultivated ground that most people would walk past without a second glance.
What it represents, however, is a structure that was once clearly defined enough to be recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, and old enough to have since dissolved almost entirely back into the landscape.
The site is a univallate enclosure, meaning a roughly circular area defined by a single surrounding bank or wall, a form that occurs widely across early medieval Ireland and is typically associated with settlement, though some examples served agricultural or ceremonial purposes. This particular example measures approximately 14 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and 10 metres across from northwest to southeast, with the ground rising to a maximum height of about 1.5 metres at its highest surviving point. Only faint traces of the enclosing bank remain, mostly on the northwest side. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a systematic study of the extraordinary concentration of monuments in that area, and that record remains the principal source of what is known about it.