Enclosure, Knockaneyouloo, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Knockaneyouloo, Co. Kerry

On the south-western slopes of Mount Foley in County Kerry, a low platform of earth sits in ordinary pastureland, ringed by a broken circle of large boulders.

It measures roughly 8.2 metres by 6.8 metres, slightly raised above the surrounding ground, and it does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps. Locally, people have always called it a fort.

The modest dimensions and gapped boulder outline are what remain of an enclosure whose defining wall was dismantled in the 1950s, the stone presumably cleared for other uses. Before that removal, the site would have presented a more legible ring, of the kind found across early medieval Ireland, where enclosed farmsteads, often called raths or ringforts, were built in their thousands to define domestic and agricultural space. The slightly raised platform is a familiar remnant of such structures, formed by the gradual accumulation of occupation material within the enclosing bank over centuries of use. There is also a local tradition that a souterrain lies somewhere at the site; a souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage, typically associated with these enclosures, used variously for storage, refuge, or as a vent for a dwelling above. No map marks the place, and its survival depends almost entirely on local memory.

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