Enclosure, Glenmore, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Glenmore, Co. Longford

On a hilltop in Glenmore, County Longford, the ground holds the faint memory of something circular.

It takes an aircraft and the right season to see it clearly: a cropmark, that telltale variation in grass or grain growth that betrays buried or semi-buried features to those looking down from above, tracing out what appears to be a roughly circular enclosure around thirty-eight metres in diameter. On the ground, the evidence is far more modest, a low earthen bank no more than two metres wide and barely ten centimetres high, the kind of feature that a walker might step over without noticing.

Aerial photographs taken in 2001 first brought the site to attention, revealing the cropmark pattern that hints at the enclosure's shape. Circular enclosures of this kind are common across the Irish landscape, ranging from prehistoric ringforts used as defended farmsteads to ritual or ceremonial sites of various periods, though without excavation it is impossible to say with any certainty what this particular feature was for or when it was made. What the photographs do confirm is that it sits just off the summit of the hill, with open views stretching to the south-west, west, and north-west. Higher ground rises to the east, meaning the enclosure was positioned deliberately along a ridge line that maximised outward visibility in three directions. Whether that placement served a practical or symbolic purpose remains an open question, one the shallow bank and the cropmark alone cannot answer.

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Pete F
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