Enclosure, Derrylicka, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrylicka, Co. Kerry

In the blanket bog above the Kealduff River valley in south-west Kerry, a low drystone wall traces a D-shape across the hillside, half-swallowed by the bog that has been slowly rising around it for centuries.

The structure is modest, measuring roughly twelve metres east to west, with its straight eastern side formed not by a purpose-built wall but by an older field boundary that was simply incorporated into the design. What makes this quietly odd is the way the drystone wall narrows as it emerges above the bog surface, as though the ground is still in the process of consuming it.

The enclosure sits within a network of relict field boundaries, the ghostly outlines of a former agricultural landscape that once organised this rough hill pasture into something more deliberate. Enclosures of this kind, defined by drystone construction, that is, walls built without mortar from locally gathered stone, appear across Ireland in a range of periods and served a variety of purposes, from penning livestock to marking out a settlement's immediate territory. Here, the south-facing slope and the surviving wall courses, still standing to around 0.9 metres in places despite partial collapse, suggest a structure that was carefully positioned to make use of the terrain. The interior slopes downward to the south, toward the valley below. The relationship between the enclosure wall and the older field system boundary implies that whoever built it was working within, and adapting, an already-established landscape rather than starting from nothing.

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Pete F
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