Enclosure, Derrylahan, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
Above the treeline on the north bank of the Owenreagh river in County Kerry, a small stone enclosure sits in the landscape as though it simply grew there.
What makes it unusual is not its size, which is modest at roughly 5.7 metres by 5.2 metres, but its construction. The builder, whoever they were, incorporated a massive natural boulder directly into the northern wall rather than working around it or breaking it down. The result is a structure that blurs the line between the made and the found, between deliberate architecture and opportunistic use of what the land offered.
The enclosure is roughly circular, with walls standing about 0.7 metres high and built to a similar thickness. Inside, a paved turf-platform survives, suggesting the space had a functional interior rather than being a simple pen or boundary marker. Enclosures of this kind appear throughout the Iveragh Peninsula, a landscape that carries an extraordinary density of early settlement remains. The Iveragh peninsula stretches across much of south Kerry, and its relative remoteness has helped preserve features that elsewhere were levelled by later agriculture or development. A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan documented this particular structure as part of their comprehensive archaeological survey of the area, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which catalogued hundreds of such sites across the peninsula.
The enclosure sits above a block of forestry, which means the approach and visibility are likely to have changed considerably since any early survey. The boulder incorporated into the northern wall would be the most distinctive feature to look for on the ground, giving the structure an asymmetric, almost accidental quality that sets it apart from more regularly built examples elsewhere in Kerry.