Enclosure, Islandganniv, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Islandganniv, Co. Kerry

At Islandganniv in north County Kerry, a shallow arc of earthwork is almost all that remains of what was once a complete circular enclosure.

Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish countryside, typically interpreted as the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval families, defined by a raised bank of earth or stone, and sometimes referred to as a ringfort or rath. What makes this particular example quietly instructive is not what survives but what the maps tell us about its disappearance.

When the Ordnance Survey recorded the area in 1841 and 1842, the enclosure was clearly enough defined to be marked on the map. By the time a revised survey captured the same ground in 1939, it had already become harder to read in the landscape. Farm buildings were eventually erected within or across the site, and the combination of construction, ground disturbance, and everyday agricultural use reduced most of the circuit to nothing. What remains today is a section of the original enclosing bank running from the south-west around through south to the south-east, roughly three metres wide at the base and reaching no more than about sixty centimetres at its highest point. That the arc survived at all is likely because it sat at the edge of the built area rather than beneath it.

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