Enclosure, Coorleagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Coorleagh, Co. Kerry

On a north-facing slope above the Coomeelan stream in County Kerry, a circle of collapsed drystone walling sits in rough hill pasture, easy to walk past and almost impossible to date with certainty.

The enclosure measures just 7.4 metres across, its defining wall now reduced to a height of roughly 30 centimetres and a thickness of 75 centimetres, the stonework tumbled but still legible as a boundary. What lifts it slightly above an ordinary ruin is a detail embedded in the fabric of the wall itself: a large boulder incorporated at the northern point, and a single upright stone, standing 60 centimetres high, set into the wall at the south-east. Stones positioned like this are rarely accidental, though whether they mark an entrance, a structural anchor, or something with older symbolic purpose is not recorded.

The site sits on a break in the slope, the kind of natural shelf that would have offered a flat working surface in otherwise uneven terrain, overlooking the valley of the Coomeelan stream. Drystone enclosures of this circular type appear throughout Kerry and the wider south-west of Ireland, and their purposes vary considerably: some are the remains of small farmsteads or animal pens, others may be earlier in origin, connected to the long tradition of enclosing significant ground with a ring of stone. Here the outer kerbing is still visible along the northern to south-western arc, suggesting the wall was once a more deliberate construction than its present condition implies. A low bank also runs from the south-west to the north-west, which may represent a secondary feature or simply accumulated material from the wall's collapse over time.

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Pete F
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