Field boundary, Glantrasna, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Glantrasna, Co. Kerry

On the north-west-facing slope of Coomnadiha Mountain in south-west Kerry, a short stretch of old field wall disappears and resurfaces through blanket bog, its stones tilting at odd angles as the ground shifts beneath them.

What makes it quietly arresting is not its scale but its posture: many of the lower course stones were set upright, at right angles to the line of the wall, and they still protrude above the surface of the bog, like markers left by someone who knew the ground would eventually try to swallow the thing whole.

The wall is a relict feature, meaning it belonged to a system of land division that was abandoned long ago, the farmland it once organised now reclaimed by rough hill pasture and bog. The surviving section runs to around twenty-four metres, standing roughly eighty centimetres high where it has not collapsed, and about fifty-five centimetres thick. It meanders upslope rather than running in a strict line, which is typical of pre-improvement field boundaries that followed the natural contours of difficult terrain rather than any surveyor's geometry. Blanket bog, the deep, rain-saturated peat that covers much of upland Ireland, accumulates slowly over centuries and can preserve or distort whatever it engulfs; here it has done both, burying much of the wall while leaving those upright orthostatic stones visible above the surface as evidence of what was once a deliberate, practical piece of construction.

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Pete F
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