Field boundary, Fermoyle, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Fermoyle, Co. Kerry

On the peat-covered slopes below the ridge connecting Knocknagantee and Finnararagh mountains in south Kerry, a cluster of ancient stone structures sits half-swallowed by the bog.

Two circular enclosures, a small hut, and a series of field boundaries occupy this upland terrain, with Lough Eagles and Lough Coomnacronia on either side of the ridge and long views southward down the Sneem river valley to Kenmare Bay. What makes the complex quietly arresting is not any single dramatic feature but the layering: older walling buried beneath newer walling, a kidney-shaped modern enclosure built almost entirely over one of the ancient ones, and stone boundaries that simply vanish into the peat before resurfacing a little further on.

The main enclosure, roughly circular and measuring about 12 metres across internally, is built in a technique common to early Irish stonework: a rubble core sandwiched between inner and outer faces of large flat slabs, with intermittent boulder-like slabs set upright along both faces. A formal entrance survives on the north side, marked by a 1.2-metre upright on one side and two smaller uprights on the other, leaving a gap just over a metre wide. About 15 metres to the south sits the remains of a small hut, a form known from many early medieval and prehistoric upland sites across Ireland, though this one is poorly preserved, with walls only 20 centimetres high and an interior just 2.5 metres across. A second enclosure lies roughly 40 metres to the south-east, and it is here that the palimpsest quality of the site is most visible: a later kidney-shaped enclosure has been built almost directly on top of it, leaving the original stonework exposed only along the southern edge. The field boundaries that extend eastward from this second enclosure are constructed from roughly coursed thin slabs with uprights at intervals, and while some sections have collapsed or disappeared beneath the peat, others still stand up to 70 centimetres high. The whole complex was documented in A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan's archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996.

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