Field boundary, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the western slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a wall surfaces from the bog, runs for a stretch, then vanishes again beneath the peat.

It reappears further on, curves north-east, turns south, and disappears once more. What remains visible is modest, just a scatter of stones barely breaking the surface, their tops protruding a few centimetres above the ground. The wall itself is no more than half a metre thick and roughly thirty centimetres high where it can be measured. It is not ruined so much as swallowed.

This is a relict field boundary, meaning it pre-dates the bog that now covers it. At some point, this slope above the Owbaun River valley was divided, farmed, or at least organised by people who built walls to mark or enclose the land. Blanket bog, which forms over centuries as waterlogged, acidic conditions prevent plant matter from fully decomposing, gradually consumed the landscape around and over those walls, preserving them in the process. The total visible run of the wall, across its interrupted sections, amounts to roughly ninety metres. The gaps where the stones disappear suggest that the bog is deeper in those stretches, not that the wall was never there. It is almost certainly continuous beneath the surface.

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Pete F
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