Enclosure, Poulgorm, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Poulgorm, Co. Clare

Up on the rough elevated pasture at Poulgorm in County Clare, an oval enclosure sits pressed against the south-east corner of an early stone fort, sharing its boundary in a way that quietly raises questions about which came first and what the relationship between the two ever was.

The enclosure measures roughly 26 metres north to south and 17 metres east to west, and its western side is not a constructed wall at all but a quarry face standing about two metres high, a bare rock scarp that someone at some point decided was wall enough.

A cashel, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a type of early Irish stone enclosure, essentially a ringfort built in stone rather than earth, typically associated with the early medieval period. The rectangular cashel that neighbours this oval enclosure is a distinct monument in its own right, and the quarry face forming the enclosure's western boundary is thought to be the very source from which the cashel's stone was cut. That detail reframes the whole site: what looks like a secondary enclosure may actually be a byproduct of building the cashel itself, the hollow left behind after the stone was taken out subsequently pressed into use as a bounded space. The surviving wall along the northern to south-eastern arc is double-faced, about one and a half metres wide and standing between one and one and a half metres high, solid and deliberate in its construction even if the western side required no labour at all. Inside the enclosure stands a roofless rectangular structure of modern drystone work, its purpose unclear, though it speaks to the site continuing to serve some practical function long after its original use was forgotten.

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Pete F
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