Enclosure, Ballyganner, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballyganner, Co. Clare

On a gentle north-facing slope in the Burren's karst limestone country, there is a small enclosure that quietly refuses to fit a single period or purpose.

Roughly subrectangular in shape, measuring about 20 metres east to west and 17.3 metres north to south internally, it is defined by an overgrown stone wall whose facing stones are laid in a herringbone pattern, that diagonal alternating arrangement more often associated with Roman masonry or certain post-medieval building traditions. Despite that decorative quality, the structure is assessed as modern in origin, which makes it an oddity within its surroundings: it sits inside a large multiperiod field system, a landscape that has been divided, worked, and reworked across many centuries, and it has a smaller annexe attached at its eastern side whose function is not recorded.

What gives the site its quieter interest is the company it keeps. About 30 metres to the north lies a possible hut site, the remains of what may have been a simple roofed structure of much earlier date. Some 127 metres to the east-south-east stands a cashel, a type of early medieval stone-walled enclosure typically used to define a farmstead or high-status dwelling in the period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The field system enclosing all of these features has accumulated layers of use across different eras, and the modern enclosure at Ballyganner now sits within that longer sequence, its herringbone walling an unusual visual note among the older limestone boundaries of the Burren.

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Pete F
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