Field boundary, Cummeenduvasig, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Cummeenduvasig, Co. Kerry

On a south-east-facing slope near the head of the Owbaun River in south-west Kerry, a collapsed drystone wall disappears quietly into the bog.

That ending, abrupt and swallowed, is what gives this feature its particular quality. Drystone construction, where stones are laid without mortar and rely entirely on their own weight and the skill of the builder for stability, was the dominant method of boundary-making across Irish uplands for centuries, and countless kilometres of it still run through rough hill pasture largely unnoticed. This stretch at Cummeenduvasig is no exception to that anonymity, yet the way it has been recorded rewards a closer look.

The wall survives in several sections. The first runs approximately twenty-five metres from the bank of a small stream south-westward to a nearby enclosure, and a second section, slightly taller at around half a metre in height and nearly as thick as it is high, extends a further nineteen metres south-eastward from the corner of a rectangular feature that abuts the same enclosure. A lane aligned roughly north-east to south-west then crosses the wall, interrupting its course, before the boundary picks up again and continues for approximately seventy metres to the south-east. There it makes a final turn south-westward for about twelve metres before the bog takes over. The relationship between the wall, the enclosure, the rectangular feature, and the lane suggests a small, organised agricultural landscape, probably associated with seasonal grazing in the uplands, with different elements built and adapted over time to serve shifting needs. That the whole thing now lies collapsed, the bog advancing steadily from the south-west, is less a sign of abandonment than of the ordinary rhythm of marginal land use in Kerry, where communities worked the hills when conditions allowed and retreated when they did not.

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