Enclosure, Erneen, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Barrerneen, in the rough hill pasture of Erneen in County Kerry, there sits a small oval enclosure that has been quietly collapsing into the landscape for an unknown number of centuries.

It measures roughly eight metres east to west and six and a half metres north to south, its boundary formed by a drystone wall, a construction technique using stones stacked without mortar, that still stands to about one and a half metres in places despite partial collapse. A narrow entrance, just one metre wide, opens to the east.

What gives the structure a particular quiet interest is a detail at its southern wall: upright stone slabs set into the base of the drystone construction. This kind of feature, where large stones are planted on end to anchor or line the lower course of a wall, hints at deliberate and careful building rather than a casual field boundary. Enclosures of this general type appear across Ireland in various forms and periods, used variously for settlement, stock management, or purposes now difficult to recover. The Erneen example is modest in scale, but its oval plan and the care visible in the surviving stonework suggest it was once something more considered than a temporary pen or a clearance pile.

The site sits in open hill ground, which means its remains are exposed and relatively readable for anyone who makes the approach, though the partially collapsed sections require some imagination to reconstruct in the mind. The upright slabs at the southern base are the detail most worth pausing over once you locate the wall circuit.

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Pete F
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