Enclosure, Cooryeen, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Cooryeen, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope above Lough Inchiquin in south-west Kerry, a small circular enclosure sits quietly in rough hill pasture, its walls long since fallen but its outline still readable in the ground.

What makes it worth a second look is the care taken to make it level: the builders cut into the hillside on the upslope side to a depth of roughly half a metre, and left the downslope portion of the interior raised by about the same amount, effectively creating a flat platform from ground that was never naturally flat. The enclosure is only nine metres across, but the effort involved suggests it was meant to last.

The structure is defined partly by a collapsed drystone wall, the kind built by stacking stone without mortar, and partly by a scarp, a deliberate cut edge, where the slope was worked back on the western to north-eastern side. The remaining wall survives to about thirty centimetres in height, with a thickness of sixty centimetres, oriented roughly north-east to south-west. Inside this modest ring there is also a hut site, a distinct feature in its own right, indicating that someone not only enclosed this patch of hillside but actually lived or worked within it at some point. Enclosures of this type are found across upland Kerry, often associated with early medieval settlement or seasonal pastoral activity, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise date to any individual example.

The location above Lough Inchiquin gives the site a clear southern aspect, which would have made it relatively sheltered and well-lit for much of the year. In the surrounding rough pasture, the slight earthwork is easy to miss unless you are looking for the change in ground level where the hillside was cut back, or the low scatter of tumbled stone that marks the wall line.

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Pete F
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