Field boundary, Foilduff, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Foilduff, Co. Kerry

On the lower south-east-facing slopes of Knocknadobar Mountain in County Kerry, a set of collapsed stone walls protrudes through the surface of the bog in a pattern that is easy to miss and difficult to explain at a glance.

The walls, now no more than about 0.4 metres high and roughly 0.9 metres thick where they can still be measured, trace a roughly rectangular outline stretching approximately 105 metres from north-west to south-east and around 25 metres across. They sit amid rough heather and gorse, partially grass-covered, their stones strewn haphazardly rather than lying in any neat collapse. That irregularity is part of what makes them worth attention.

What the walls once enclosed or organised becomes a little clearer when you consider what lies near them. Two hut sites, recorded separately in the Kerry archaeological inventory, sit at the centre of the arrangement, with the field boundary walls extending outward to both the north-west and south-east of these structures. The whole complex suggests a small agricultural settlement at some earlier period, a cluster of habitation and the land managed around it, now swallowed to a significant degree by the bog that has crept over the lower mountain slopes. Bog growth of this kind is a well-documented process in the Irish uplands, where centuries of waterlogging and peat accumulation gradually bury walls, field systems, and even entire landscapes that were once actively farmed. The fact that these walls still protrude above the surface gives some indication of their original scale and solidity, even in their ruined state.

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Pete F
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