Enclosure, Foilakilly, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
On the north-west-facing slopes of Gouladane, above Bantry Bay, a rough terrace of hill pasture holds a small stone enclosure whose purpose nobody has satisfactorily explained.
The circular area, about eight metres across internally, is defined by large stones set intermittently around its southern and eastern perimeter, each stone modest in itself, perhaps forty centimetres high, but together tracing a boundary that is clearly deliberate. What makes the site genuinely puzzling are the two small rectangular structures tucked against the inside of that perimeter wall to the south. Formed from upright stone slabs and sitting roughly a metre square each, they resemble, in the words of those who recorded them, box-like compartments, though what was ever kept or done within them is entirely unknown.
Enclosures of this kind are scattered across Cork and Kerry, and while many can be tentatively associated with early medieval settlement, agriculture, or ritual, the combination here of a circular boundary with these paired interior compartments does not map neatly onto any well-understood type. The stones forming the boxes are carefully set, suggesting deliberate construction rather than casual clearance, but the scattered, jumbled stones found nearby hint that further internal structures may once have existed and have since collapsed or been displaced. Ferns have grown across much of the site, softening what edges remain and making a full reading of the ground difficult. The enclosure sits on a north-east to south-west terrace, a natural shelf in the hillside, which would have made it a practical as well as a commanding location, with long views out over the bay below.