Enclosure, Sranagalloon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
In the townland of Sranagalloon, in County Clare, there is a recorded enclosure.
That single fact is, at present, almost all that can be said with confidence. The site carries a formal archaeological designation, which means someone at some point identified it as significant enough to log, to name, and to protect, yet the details that would normally accompany such a record remain unavailable to the general public.
Enclosures are among the most common, and most varied, monument types in the Irish landscape. The term covers everything from the circular earthen banks of early medieval ringforts, which served as farmsteads and status markers, to prehistoric ceremonial boundaries and later field enclosures of uncertain date. Without further detail it is impossible to say which category the Sranagalloon example falls into, what it looks like from the ground, or how much survives. Clare is a county with an unusually dense concentration of early medieval and prehistoric remains, many of them quietly embedded in farmland or scrub, known locally but rarely visited. Whether this particular enclosure is a grassed-over bank, a stony ring, or something more ambiguous is a question the available record simply does not yet answer.