Enclosure, Lugbaun, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Lugbaun, Co. Sligo

On the eastern edge of a natural terrace in the stony, sharply undulating pastureland of Lugbaun, Co. Sligo, a roughly circular enclosure sits in a way that is easy to misread at first glance.

Walk around it and the ground behaves oddly: step inside from the west and you are level with the surrounding fields, but move to the northeastern arc and the exterior drops away by about two metres beneath you. The enclosure is not so much built up as it is partly carved out by the landscape itself, the ancient drystone wall working with a natural scarp rather than against it.

The enclosure measures approximately 23 metres north to south and just over 26 metres east to west, dimensions consistent with the kind of early medieval ringfort, or rath, that once served as a defended farmstead across rural Ireland. These structures typically enclosed a dwelling and outbuildings within a circular bank or wall, the boundary providing security against both animal and human threat. Here, the builders made deliberate use of the existing terrace, allowing the natural drop on the northeastern and eastern sides to do much of the defensive work. What remains of the perimeter wall is mostly a low, moss-covered bank of rough rounded stones, around half a metre in internal height, though on the eastern side the external face still stands at roughly 2.2 metres above the lower ground below. Along the northwestern edge, the old enclosure wall has been absorbed into a later field boundary, itself now dilapidated, which is a common fate for prehistoric and early medieval structures in agricultural land. The interior is level and grassy, and a tangle of hawthorn, hazel scrub, and brambles rings the perimeter, the kind of colonising scrub that tends to signal undisturbed ground beneath.

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Pete F
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