Field boundary, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

On a south-facing slope above the Clydagh River valley in County Kerry, a curved line of stones emerges and disappears through the surface of a bog like something half-remembered.

This is not a ruin in the dramatic sense, no collapsed tower or roofless gable, but a field boundary: a low stone wall, roughly half a metre thick and just over half a metre high, that traces a path upslope to the north-northwest before bending away to the northeast, covering a total distance of around a hundred metres. What makes it quietly arresting is the construction. Many of the stones are set upright, placed at right angles to the line of the wall rather than laid flat in the more familiar coursed style. Fallen rubble, shed from the structure over time, has been gradually consumed by the surrounding bog.

Bog growth is a slow business, typically a millimetre or so per year depending on conditions, which means that a wall embedded to any significant depth in peat has been sitting in the landscape for a very long time. The heather-clad hill pasture here is rough ground, the kind that was likely marginal even when the wall was in active use, and the intermittent way the stonework breaks the surface suggests the bog has been encroaching steadily for centuries. Field boundaries of this curvilinear type are found across upland Ireland and often predate the more regular enclosure patterns associated with later agricultural reorganisation. They tend to follow the natural contours of the land rather than impose a geometric order on it, which is part of what gives this particular example its organic, almost tentative quality as it curves across the slope above the river valley.

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Pete F
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