Enclosure, Com An Lóndraigh, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Com An Lóndraigh, Co. Kerry

On the eastern slopes of Beenmore, on the Dingle Peninsula, there is a site that no longer really exists, at least not in any visible form.

A circular univallate enclosure, meaning a roughly ringfort-type settlement defined by a single earthen or stone bank, was recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map but has since disappeared from the landscape entirely. What was once a legible feature in the terrain is now simply ground.

Attached to the vanished enclosure was a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically constructed in the early medieval period and associated with nearby settlements, often used for storage or as a place of refuge. This one was drystone-built, meaning its walls were laid without mortar, and for a time it remained accessible to anyone who knew where to look. Local knowledge, however, confirms that even this has now been covered over. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, which remains one of the more thorough regional surveys carried out in Ireland during that period.

What remains at Com An Lóndraigh is essentially an absence. The enclosure gone, the souterrain sealed, the slopes of Beenmore giving little away to a casual eye. That such features once existed here is itself worth noting; the Dingle Peninsula is unusually dense with early medieval remains, and even sites that have not survived intact contribute something to the broader picture of how this landscape was once organised and inhabited.

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