Enclosure, Foilmore, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Foilmore, Co. Kerry

On the north bank of the Ferta river in Foilmore, where the water curves sharply, there was once an oval enclosure substantial enough to earn a place on the Ordnance Survey maps.

It no longer stands in any meaningful sense. What remains is a shallow depression in the ground, a faint negative impression of something that was ploughed out during the 1960s, leaving the landscape looking much like any other field on the Iveragh Peninsula.

Enclosures of this kind were a common feature of early medieval Ireland, typically serving as the defining boundary of a farmstead or small settlement, sometimes surrounding a church or burial ground. The oval or sub-circular form was the dominant convention, the enclosing bank or wall marking a clear threshold between the domestic world within and the open land beyond. At Foilmore, enough physical trace survives to confirm where the site once sat: a scatter of boulders and overgrowth in the north-western sector of the depression, and a rise of roughly one metre at the south-eastern edge where the ground climbs back to the surrounding field level. These details hint at the original profile of the enclosing bank, even if the structure itself has long since been destroyed.

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