Enclosure, Derrynacaheragh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrynacaheragh, Co. Kerry

At Derrynacaheragh in south-west Kerry, a circular enclosure sits quietly in pastureland at the base of a steep south-east-facing slope, looking out over the valley of the Feabunaun stream.

What gives it an odd, considered quality is something easy to overlook: the south-eastern section of its interior floor has been deliberately raised by roughly 40 centimetres to create a level surface, compensating for the natural incline of the hillside. Someone, at some point, went to considerable trouble to make this circle sit flat against a slope that was working against them.

The enclosure is modest in size, around 11.8 metres in diameter, and defined by a drystone wall, the kind built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stone. The wall survives to about a metre in height and is roughly 80 centimetres thick, though it has partially collapsed in places. Along the western side, a mound of field-clearance debris, the accumulated spoil of generations of farmers gathering loose stones from nearby ground, has buried and obscured much of the enclosing wall. Linear field boundaries meet the enclosure at both its western and eastern edges, suggesting the surrounding landscape has been reorganised and reworked over time, folding this older structure into a more recent pattern of land division. Enclosures of this circular, drystone type are found widely across Kerry and the broader Irish landscape, and may variously have served as homestead enclosures, animal pounds, or places of more ceremonial significance, though assigning a firm function without excavation is rarely straightforward.

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Pete F
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