Enclosure, Clooneen, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Clooneen, Co. Clare

Tucked into a depression within a hazel wood at Clooneen in County Clare, this irregular enclosure is defined not by the kind of carefully built stone wall one tends to associate with ancient Irish field monuments, but partly by the landscape itself.

On the eastern and southern sides, natural limestone cliffs, rising to around three metres, do the work of a boundary. On the western and northern sides, a grass-covered spread of stone, somewhere between three and four metres wide and no more than a metre high, completes the circuit. There is no dressed facing on the stonework, and no identifiable entrance.

The enclosure stretches roughly 36 metres from north to south and 48 metres from east to west, giving it an elongated, irregular outline. It appears on Tim Robinson's detailed map of the Burren, published in 1977, a cartographic work renowned for its close attention to the physical and cultural fabric of that limestone landscape. The site was formally listed as an enclosure in both the Sites and Monuments Record of 1992 and the Record of Monuments and Places of 1996, though an on-the-ground inspection carried out in 1997 gave a clearer picture of just how much its character depends on the natural rock rather than human construction. Enclosures of this broad type are found throughout Ireland and could have served any number of purposes across different periods, from the enclosure of livestock to the definition of a settlement or ritual space, though nothing in the current record points firmly toward any one of those functions here.

The site sits within a hazel wood in a hollow, which likely contributes to its obscurity. The combination of natural cliff and low stone spread blends readily into the surrounding terrain, and without knowing what to look for, a visitor might pass through the enclosure without registering it as a monument at all.

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Pete F
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