Enclosure, Feeans, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Feeans, Co. Kerry

There is something quietly puzzling about a place that exists only on one map.

At Feeans in County Kerry, a circular enclosure appears on the 1916 Ordnance Survey map with enough confidence to be recorded, yet it is entirely absent from the earlier OS edition of 1841 to 1842. No earthwork, no ring of disturbed soil, no trace of any kind survives on the ground today.

Circular enclosures in Ireland are most commonly associated with ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, though the term can cover a range of features from different eras. What makes Feeans unusual is the gap in the cartographic record. The 1841 to 1842 survey was a remarkably thorough undertaking, and features of any obvious age or size were generally captured. The fact that an enclosure appears for the first time in 1916 raises questions that the ground itself can no longer answer. It may have been a field boundary, a pound for livestock, or the remnant of something older that was simply missed or misread. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, records it without resolving the ambiguity, noting only its appearance on the later map and its complete absence today.

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