Enclosure, Shronebirrane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Shronebirrane, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slope of Knocknaveacal in south-west Kerry, a stretch of rough hill pasture conceals what was once a small, organised settlement, its boundaries now reduced to low, grass-smothered rubble and half-buried slabs.

The enclosure is irregular in shape, roughly 170 metres east to west and 80 metres north to south, and it uses the natural landscape as deliberately as any built wall: along one side, the high bank of a tributary of the Drimminboy River, flowing north-west to south-east, does the work that stone does elsewhere.

What survives of the constructed boundary is modest but legible. On the north, east, and south sides, the lower courses of a collapsed drystone wall remain, the rubble uncoursed and now largely level with the upslope ground to the north, as though the hillside has quietly risen to meet it. Slabs along the eastern and southern sections are embedded in the soil and partly covered in grass, standing only about 0.3 metres proud of the ground. Inside this boundary, four separate hut sites have been recorded, the circular or sub-circular remains of small stone-walled structures that once sheltered people or animals. A fifth hut site sits just outside the northern wall, and a relict field boundary lies immediately to the east, suggesting that the enclosure was part of a wider pattern of land use rather than an isolated feature. Taken together, the cluster points to a community making careful, sustained use of this hillside, managing grazing, agriculture, and shelter within a defined and deliberate space. No date is firmly attached to the site, but such enclosures with associated hut sites are characteristic of early medieval or later pastoral activity in Kerry's uplands, where communities seasonally grazed livestock far from permanent settlements.

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