Enclosure, Fanore More, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Fanore More, Co. Clare

At the foot of a north-west-facing cliff on the edge of the Burren, a roughly oval enclosure sits on a narrow ledge of rough pasture overlooking the Caher River and the dunes at Fanore.

What makes this particular structure quietly odd is not the enclosure itself but its relationship to the landscape around it: a large boulder roughly 25 metres to the south-south-west, and a cave entrance about 60 metres in the same direction, its mouth partially blocked by a low wall, may all have functioned together as a single complex. It is the kind of arrangement that suggests deliberate organisation rather than casual settlement, though exactly what that organisation was for remains an open question.

The enclosure measures approximately 21 metres east to west and just over 18 metres north to south internally, making it a substantial oval space. Its boundary is formed from a combination of deliberate double-walling, in which large stone blocks are set upright on their edges, and natural outcroppings of rock incorporated into the structure at the east-north-east and east-south-east sides. An enclosure of this type, using both shaped stone and bedrock as part of a continuous boundary, is characteristic of Burren construction, where the landscape itself does much of the engineering. The main entrance, at the north-north-east, is partially blocked and has collapsed on its western side; three large blocks laid transversely still define its eastern side. Two further gaps survive, one to the north-east at 0.6 metres wide, one to the south-west at roughly 1 metre. The enclosure sits near the north-east end of a wider complex that includes field walls, hut sites, and house sites, making this one component in what was once a more elaborate pattern of land use. Tim Robinson recorded it on his map of the Burren in 1977, which remains one of the most detailed cartographic engagements with this landscape ever produced.

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Pete F
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