Field boundary, Erneen, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Erneen, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Barrerneen in County Kerry, two curving lines of stone wall push up through the surface of the bog like something the land is slowly trying to forget.

They are not dramatic ruins; they are quiet ones. One wall runs westward from a riverbank for roughly ninety metres, standing just half a metre high and about sixty centimetres thick. A second, broadly parallel wall lies some ninety metres to the north and runs east to west across the hillslope for around sixty-five metres. Rubble has scattered downslope to the south over what must be a considerable span of time. What you are looking at, in essence, is a field system, the physical ghost of agricultural land management at some point in the past.

Curvilinear field boundaries of this kind, walls that follow the natural contours of the land rather than running in straight lines, tend to be associated with early medieval or pre-medieval farming patterns in Ireland, though dating them without excavation is difficult. The bog that has partially consumed these walls is itself a clue to age; blanket bog formation in Kerry has been encroaching on formerly workable land for millennia, and walls that protrude above peat are often older than anything a casual glance might suggest. The fact that a hut site has been recorded approximately a hundred metres to the north adds weight to the idea that this was once a worked, inhabited landscape, a small settlement with its fields laid out around it on the hillside, before the ground changed and the bog took over.

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Pete F
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