Enclosure, Sackville, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Sackville, Co. Kerry

There is a particular kind of archaeological site that exists almost entirely on paper.

In a large pastoral field near Sackville in north County Kerry, a circular enclosure once occupied the ground, leaving enough of a mark that surveyors recorded it on Ordnance Survey maps in both 1842 and 1897. Today, nothing visible remains. The field has absorbed whatever earthwork, wall, or boundary once defined the circle, and a visitor standing there would have no way of knowing the feature had ever existed.

Circular enclosures of this type are common across Ireland, though their individual histories vary considerably. Many are the remains of ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Others may represent earlier prehistoric activity, or later field boundaries that happened to take a rounded form. Without excavation, it is rarely possible to say which category applies. What the two Ordnance Survey appearances do confirm is that something was legible on the ground as recently as the late nineteenth century, making its complete disappearance a relatively modern event, most likely the result of agricultural improvement and land clearance over the intervening decades.

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