Finally, Ireland's famous stone walls have been added to UNESCO's list of protected heritage world practices.

In 2018 France, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy and Cyprus were all inscribed onto the list. 

Strangely, Ireland wasn't included despite the prevalence, both geographically across the island of Ireland, and historically through time from the neolithic Cedide Fields through to modern field boundaries that vary by region from Connemara to the Mournes of County Down.

The Céide Fields of County Mayo have some of the oldest field systems on the planet, fields bounded by stone walls dating back 6,000 years.

I've written about stone walls before here on Panoramic Ireland, but this is the first time that Irish stone walls have gained international prominence.

It's interesting that intangible cultural practices include customs, traditions, crafts, games and practices that are part of people's lives and identities both individually and wider communities, and are passed on from generation to generation.

Yet surely a stone wall is tangible, a physical structure which is of course touchable, viewable and part of the wider community.

Anyway, the ancient Irish, and modern, landscapes are filled with traditional Irish culture and adding Ireland to this list will undoubtedly help in the realisation that stone walls are more than just a scenic addition to the Irish landscape, they are an integral part of Ireland.

Panoramic Ireland has built many stone walls over the years and enjoyed every single minute.

But more importantly, Panoramic Ireland is continuing to photograph Irish landscapes such as stone walls.

Ireland has no shortage of fine mountain and valley scenery, despite having no large mountains - nothing over 1,040 metres above sea level.

Here in late summer, one of many such Irish landscapes, the small buildings with tin roof, rusted from years of exposure - standing out amongst the green of the west of Ireland, mirrored in the bright colours of the rowan berries from the mountain ash in the foreground.

A cloud filled sky creates a light and shadow patchwork over the steep slopes of this countryside scene.

Join Panoramic Ireland to photograph in the west of Ireland.

Stone walls in Ireland are as old as farming, the oldest known to be those from Ireland's prehistoric farmers at the Ceide Fields in North Mayo which are approximately 6,000 years old.

Like any field enclosure they provide many uses: keeping cows and sheep in, keeping others out, delineating 'my land' from 'your land', but these stone walls also provide another useful function - they are dry built out of the local stone, in fact usually the stone from the very fields that they enclose. So by building the walls farmers are clearing the land.

And so the stone walls that one finds on travels in Ireland are local to that area. In County Down ( see image below) they are typically massive granite boulders, bigger than anywhere else and in Galway they are built of the abundant limestone.