Field boundary, Mangerton, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On the south-western slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a collapsed drystone boundary wall picks its way across rough hill pasture in a route that is anything but straightforward.
Rather than running in a simple straight line, it curves and turns through several changes of direction, skirting around the remains of multiple hut sites as though it were built to accommodate a small community already settled on the hillside. That relationship between the wall and the huts, neither ignoring the other, is what makes this particular fragment of the upland landscape quietly interesting.
The boundary runs on both banks of the Owbaun River. On the northern bank, a section oriented roughly north to south extends about 25 metres towards the water, standing at roughly 0.4 metres high and 0.6 metres thick where it survives. On the southern bank, a corresponding wall begins almost directly opposite and sets off on a more elaborate course: south-east past a cluster of conjoined hut sites, then south-east again past a single hut site lying to its north-east, then east with another hut site to its south, and finally north-east for approximately 200 metres until it meets the river again further upstream, effectively enclosing a rough parcel of the slope. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful selection and stacking of stones, is typical of upland Kerry, where loose fieldstone has always been more available than lime. What remains here is largely tumbled, marked out by intermittent upright stones rather than anything approaching a standing wall.
The hut sites threaded into this boundary suggest a pattern of use common to Irish upland areas: seasonal grazing, small-scale cultivation, or both, with the boundary and the shelters forming a loosely integrated whole. Whether the wall predates the huts, post-dates them, or grew up alongside them is not recorded, but the way the wall navigates around each structure implies at least some awareness of them during its construction.