Enclosure, Derrygreenia, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrygreenia, Co. Kerry

Tucked within a larger enclosure in Derrygreenia, in south-west Kerry, is a smaller rectangular space that sits like a room within a room.

Measuring roughly twelve metres northwest to southeast and eight metres northeast to southwest, it is defined not by a single continuous wall but by a scarp, a deliberate cut or slope in the ground, faced on three sides with an uncoursed rubble wall standing between ten centimetres and sixty-five centimetres high. Along the southwest side, the boundary softens into the faintest trace of a grass-covered earthen bank, barely five centimetres proud of the surrounding ground. The stone facing has collapsed in places, and what remains is modest, easy to overlook, the kind of feature that rewards a slow walk and a patient eye rather than a glance from a distance.

This inner enclosure sits in the southern sector of a larger parent enclosure, and within its own southern sector there is a hut site, suggesting a layered pattern of use across the landscape. Enclosures of this kind, where a smaller defined space is nested inside a larger one, are a recurring feature of early medieval and later rural Ireland. They may have served any number of functions, from the penning of animals to the demarcation of domestic or agricultural space, and the presence of a hut site nearby points toward some form of habitation or sustained activity on the ground. The interior of the enclosure is level, which in a landscape of Kerry's character often signals deliberate preparation of the ground rather than simple accident of topography.

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Pete F
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