Field boundary, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

On a steep north-west-facing slope above Kenmare Bay in County Kerry, a low stone wall breaks through the surface of a bog, curving gently across rough hill pasture as though the land itself has half-remembered something.

It is not a dramatic ruin. It stands only about thirty centimetres above the ground, and its width of roughly sixty-five centimetres suggests a modest boundary rather than a defensive structure. Yet the fact that it survives at all, absorbed into the bog and then slowly re-emerging, gives it a quiet strangeness.

The wall is curvilinear, meaning it follows a curved rather than straight alignment, a form commonly associated with early medieval field systems in Ireland, when boundaries were laid out around the contours of the land rather than imposed in geometric grids. It runs for approximately sixty-five metres upslope to the south-east before curving eastward for a further fifteen metres or so, with several gaps along its length where it has fallen or been disturbed. What makes its position particularly telling is its relationship to a nearby hut site located about fifteen metres to the north-east. The proximity of a field boundary to a settlement feature like this suggests the wall once formed part of a small farming landscape, demarcating ground associated with whoever lived and worked on that slope. The bog has since crept over much of both features, preserving them imperfectly but preserving them nonetheless.

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Pete F
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