Enclosure, Rover, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Enclosures
In the townland of Rover in County Sligo, a circular enclosure roughly thirty metres across was once clearly enough defined to be mapped by Ordnance Survey teams in 1838, yet today there is nothing whatsoever to see at ground level.
No bank, no ditch, no trace. The surrounding field boundaries that might once have framed or hinted at its outline have been removed, and the low-lying, wet ground to the north of a local river swallows any remaining evidence entirely.
Enclosures of this kind, typically formed by an earthen bank or fosse encircling a domestic or agricultural space, were a common feature of the Irish rural landscape across many centuries, though individual examples are often difficult to date without excavation. What makes this one quietly interesting is the gap between the two Ordnance Survey records. By the time the six-inch map was revised in 1914, the enclosure was shown with a slightly modified eastern side, now linear rather than curved, suggesting that in the intervening decades something had changed, whether through agricultural activity, deliberate alteration, or simple degradation. It had already begun its disappearance into the land before it vanished from sight altogether.