Enclosure, Rossacoosane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Rossacoosane, Co. Kerry

On the north-eastern slopes of Knockanaskill, in a stretch of marshy ground above Kenmare Bay, sits a roughly circular stone enclosure that does not appear on any Ordnance Survey map.

That absence is itself a small puzzle. The site is real enough, measuring approximately 18.5 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, but it has slipped through the cartographic record entirely, leaving it to be found only by those who already know to look.

What survives is fragmentary but legible to a patient eye. Stone enclosures of this kind, sometimes called cashels or ringforts depending on their construction, were typically used as farmsteads or settlement enclosures during the early medieval period in Ireland, though the exact date of this particular example is not recorded. The outer wall has collapsed extensively and is heavily overgrown, but along the western half of the circuit, stretches of external stone facing can still be traced. At the north-west, horizontal courses of large flat slabs remain stacked to a height of around 40 centimetres, which gives some sense of how the original construction was handled. The inner face of the wall is entirely hidden by vegetation. At the south-east, a gap in the circuit may mark the position of the original entrance, and on the northern side of that gap an upright slab, 75 centimetres tall, still stands as a kind of threshold marker. Inside, a concentration of collapsed stone in the south-west quadrant is thought to represent the remains of a hut structure, the kind of small internal building that would once have provided shelter within the enclosure's protective perimeter.

The site sits in genuinely awkward terrain, on a boggy hillside that offers long views south over Kenmare Bay. The marshy ground that now surrounds it has probably contributed to both its preservation and its obscurity, making it easier to overlook and harder to reach in equal measure.

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Pete F
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