Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On an east-facing slope in the karst landscape of County Clare, a subrectangular enclosure sits quietly within a field system that has been in use across multiple periods of history.
The enclosure measures roughly 34 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and around 27 metres across, and its defining wall has been grassed over to the point where it blends almost entirely into the surrounding terrain. It would be easy to walk past without registering what you were looking at.
Karst is limestone country, where the rock has been slowly dissolved by rainwater over millennia, leaving a characteristically rough, fissured surface with thin soils and a semi-exposed feel. Enclosures of this kind, defined by a low stone or earthen wall, were used throughout early Irish history for a range of purposes including settlement, agriculture, and the corralling of livestock, and their presence within layered or multiperiod field systems suggests that communities returned to and reworked the same ground across generations. This particular enclosure sits within exactly such a system, and a second enclosure lies approximately 96 metres to the southwest, hinting at a wider pattern of organised activity across the plateau rather than a single isolated structure.