Mound, Lissooleen, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Lissooleen, Co. Kerry

At Lissooleen in County Kerry, a low grass-covered mound sits in quiet relationship with two other ancient structures, each of them nudging against the others across a small patch of ground.

What makes the arrangement quietly odd is the sequence written into the landscape: a standing stone marks the mound's north-western edge, and a ringfort has since bitten into the mound's southern side, meaning that three distinct monuments from potentially different periods are stacked together in the same modest field.

The mound itself is sub-circular in plan, measuring roughly 28 metres east to west and 14.5 metres north to south, and rises to a maximum height of just one metre before dropping sharply to the surrounding ground level at its northern edge. It is unassuming to look at, but the geometry tells an interesting story. The standing stone, a single upright slab of the kind that appears across prehistoric Ireland often as a boundary marker or ceremonial indicator, anchors one corner of the mound. The ringfort, an enclosed farmstead of the kind that became common in early medieval Ireland, was then constructed close enough to the mound that its bank or ditch cut directly into the mound's southern perimeter. Whether the people who built the ringfort were aware they were encroaching on an older monument is unknowable, but the physical evidence of that overlap has been preserved at ground level for anyone willing to look carefully at the contours of the grass.

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Pete F
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