Field boundary, Derrynagree, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On the southern slopes of Knocknagantee in County Kerry, a series of ancient walls disappears into the bog.
Not ruined, exactly, and not forgotten so much as swallowed: one wall can be followed for a hundred metres beneath the peat, traced by its outline even where the ground has long since closed over it. This is a pre-bog field system, meaning it was built and in use before the blanket peat accumulated around and above it, preserving in the process a plan of how people once organised land that is now sodden and featureless to the casual eye.
The complex sits on a triangular shelf of peat-covered ground and consists of several walls running roughly north to south, built from boulders and upright stone slabs. They average about a metre in height and sixty centimetres in width, though the bog has overlain parts of them at various points. Towards the western side, a 200-metre stretch curves in a gentle arc, its midsection buried under peat; a shorter, 20-metre section runs at right angles between that wall and a third, more irregular one that meanders northward. Scattered across the complex are six small circular enclosures, crudely constructed and surviving to only two courses of stone. Their internal diameters range from three to ten metres, and their relationship to the walls is not entirely clear, though they may form part of the same system. Nearby, more recent sheepfolds suggest the land continued to be used for grazing long after the original field boundaries fell out of regular use, with later farming simply overlaying an older pattern that was already half-buried.