What is recorded here

Ancient Hamlet holds up to eleven grass-grown stone structures beside Ballinskelligs Abbey, suggesting a crowded working life rather than a passive rural landscape. Some chambers measure seven point six metres across while others remain barely two metres wide, creating a sharp contrast between domestic space and cramped functional rooms. Sir William Petty later forced a pilchard fishery upon this coastal edge, and these banks may have served that brutal economic experiment. Poor pasture now hides the truth, but the density of walls admits that many people once lived tightly together beneath the open sky.

Ancient Hamlet: Located in a field of poor pasture about 120m NW of Ballinskelligs Abbey (KE097-036----) is a complex of grass-grown stony banks. Up to eleven possible structures can be identified, ranging in internal dimensions from 2m to 7.6m. The banks average .5m high and 1m wide, and in one instance a section of coursed drystone walling is exposed. Most are rectangular in outline, but three circular examples are present. Scattered throughout the site are a number of amorphous sod-covered mounds. A pilchard fishery was established at Ballinskelligs by Sir William Petty in the late seventeenth century (De Coursey Ireland 1981, 35), and this nucleated settlement may have been associated with it. The above description is derived from A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan (compilers), 'The Iveragh peninsula: an archaeological survey of South Kerry'. Cork University Press (1996), no. 1121. In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 31 July 2013

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