Enclosure, Erneen, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On a saddle of high ground between two hills in south-west Kerry, a small circular wall sits partially swallowed by bog, its drystone courses still just clearing the peat surface after what may be many centuries of slow submergence.

The enclosure at Erneen is modest in scale, nine metres across, but the details of its construction suggest someone once thought carefully about this patch of rough hill pasture. The northern arc of the interior has been deliberately cut back into the rising slope to level the ground, a small but telling piece of labour that speaks to practical intent rather than casual use.

The structure sits in a sheltered hollow between Knockboy and Knocknamanagh, and it does not stand alone. Roughly three metres to the north lies a hut site, and immediately to the west a relict field boundary abuts the enclosure wall. A relict field boundary is exactly what it sounds like, the surviving trace of an old land division, long since abandoned and absorbed into the hillside. Taken together, these three features, the enclosure, the hut site, and the field boundary, suggest a small cluster of activity, perhaps a seasonal settlement or an upland farming station, its original purpose now largely obscured by the bog that has crept up around it. The drystone wall itself, built without mortar in the tradition common across rural Ireland, still stands to roughly 0.7 metres in height where it has not collapsed, and protrudes some 0.4 metres above the bog surface. An entrance break on the north-east side marks where people once passed in and out.

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Pete F
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