Enclosure, Curravoola, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Curravoola, Co. Kerry

On a ridge running east to west above the Inny River valley in south-west Kerry, a small oval of tumbled stone sits in open hill grazing, largely unnoticed by anyone not specifically looking for it.

The structure measures roughly 7.6 metres from east to west and 5 metres north to south, its surviving lower courses of rough stonework still tracing the outline of a wall that was once considerably taller. The collapsed upper courses now lie scattered across the interior and spill outward along the perimeter, giving the site the appearance of a slow-motion unravelling that has been proceeding for a very long time.

An enclosure of this kind, a modest walled area almost certainly used to define a domestic or agricultural space, sits within a cluster of related features that together suggest a small episode of past settlement or land use on this hillside. Immediately to the north-east, a hut site adjoins the enclosure, the remains of what was likely a simple dwelling, while a relict field boundary lies close by to the north. Relict boundaries are the ghost-lines of earlier agricultural organisation, walls or banks that once separated parcels of land and have since been abandoned to the vegetation. Together, the three features point to a moment when this exposed ridge above the Inny valley was not simply hill grazing but a worked and inhabited place, its current quietness a relatively recent condition rather than a permanent one. The wall thickness of 0.7 metres, modest but substantial enough to have supported a greater height, suggests a structure built with some intention of permanence, even if time and the pressures of a Kerry hillside have argued otherwise.

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Pete F
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