Enclosure, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a north-facing slope above Kenmare Bay, in the rough hill pasture of Drombohilly, sits a small stone enclosure that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

It is not dramatic in scale, measuring roughly five metres along its longest axis, and its drystone wall has partly collapsed to a height of just half a metre. What gives it a quiet particularity is the construction itself: some of the lower course stones are set upright, at right angles to the line of the wall, a technique that speaks to a deliberate if unrefined hand. The interior is largely obscured by rubble, and the north-western portion of the floor has been built up by about thirty centimetres to level out the natural fall of the hillside, a small but telling accommodation to the terrain.

Drystone enclosures of this kind, built without mortar and defined by a roughly constructed perimeter wall, appear across the upland landscapes of Kerry and the wider south-west, often associated with transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock to higher ground, or with small-scale agricultural activity that left few other traces. The subrectangular shape here, slightly irregular at both ends, is typical of structures built pragmatically rather than to any formal plan. Fourteen metres to the east lies a separate hut site, suggesting that this corner of the hillside once supported at least some form of intermittent human presence, perhaps a seasonal shelter alongside the enclosure. The two features together form a modest but coherent picture of the kind of marginal, small-scale land use that left its marks quietly across the Irish uplands.

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Pete F
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