Enclosure, Sheheree, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
On a north-facing slope in Sheheree, County Kerry, there is an ancient enclosure that nobody walking the land would ever notice.
It exists, for practical purposes, only from the air. A 1983 aerial photograph, taken as part of the Ordnance Survey aerial programme, reveals a D-shaped outline roughly 30 metres across its northwest-to-southeast axis, with a notably straight southeastern side running to approximately 70 metres in length. At ground level, among the pasture grass and the ordinary rhythms of a working field, there is nothing to see at all.
What the photograph captured is a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried features influence the vegetation growing above them. Ditches that were once dug and later filled tend to retain more moisture than the surrounding soil, causing the grass or crops above to grow slightly taller or greener; former walls and compacted surfaces have the opposite effect. From altitude, these subtle differences in growth trace the outlines of structures that vanished from the surface centuries or even millennia ago. The D-shaped plan visible at Sheheree is consistent with the enclosed settlements found across early medieval Ireland, though without excavation it is impossible to say precisely what the site was or when it was in use. Enclosures of this type, often called ringforts when they survive as earthworks, were typically used as farmsteads, the straight-sided variant being somewhat less common than the fully circular form.
Because the enclosure leaves no impression on the ground, there is little a visitor could observe standing in the field itself. The site is a reminder that the landscape of Kerry, apparently unremarkable in many of its quieter corners, carries a great deal beneath the surface that ordinary perception cannot reach.