Field boundary, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Knockantooreen in south-west Kerry, a set of old stone walls has been slowly disappearing into the bog for longer than anyone recorded.

What makes the site quietly arresting is the scale of what remains: a roughly rectangular area stretching around 360 metres east to west and 170 metres north to south, defined by both straight and curving stone walls that still protrude, intermittently, above the bog surface. The walls themselves, where measurable, run to about 0.6 metres thick and stand to roughly 0.65 metres in height, with rubble from their collapsed upper courses scattered alongside them or pressed down into the peat.

These are field boundaries, the kind of low stone divisions that once organised hill pasture for grazing or small-scale cultivation. The combination of linear and curvilinear walls across such a large area suggests a system that developed over time rather than being laid out in a single episode, though when that activity began or ended is not recorded. The bog has done much of the work of preservation here, as it so often does in Ireland: peat accumulates slowly and seals what lies beneath, so that rubble embedded in it may have been there for centuries. The rough, rocky character of the surrounding pasture at Inchinanagh points to marginal land, the sort of ground that tends to be abandoned when easier options exist, which is perhaps why these walls were left to the bog rather than robbed for later construction.

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Pete F
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