Enclosure, Derrylahan, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrylahan, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope above the Owenreagh river valley in County Kerry, there is a small stone enclosure that does not appear on any Ordnance Survey map.

That absence is, in its own quiet way, the most interesting thing about it. Countless ruined structures across Ireland went unrecorded for generations, either overlooked by surveyors or simply too ambiguous to classify with confidence, and this one slipped through entirely. It sits on a natural ledge in the hillside, which suggests whoever built it chose the spot with some deliberation, sheltered from northerly weather and positioned to command a view down into the valley below.

The enclosure is modest in scale. Its interior measures roughly 10.2 metres by 9.1 metres, and its drystone wall, built without mortar by layering and fitting stones together, survives to a height of about 0.4 metres and a width of around a metre. The construction is described as rough rather than refined, which may point to a functional rather than ceremonial purpose, though without excavation it is difficult to say much more with certainty. Enclosures of this general type on the Iveragh Peninsula range from early medieval farmsteads to animal pens of much later date, and the form alone cannot settle the question. What can be said is that the structure was recorded as part of an archaeological survey of south Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, which remains one of the more thorough regional surveys of its kind carried out in Ireland.

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Pete F
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