Enclosure, Cloghan, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloghan, Co. Leitrim

On the eastern bank of a small stream running south to north, about ten metres from the shore of Lough Melvin, there is an oval patch of overgrown ground that most people would walk past without a second glance.

It measures roughly eighteen metres east to west and fifteen metres north to south, and its edges are defined by a scarp, a low earthen slope or drop in the ground, rising to about 0.85 metres on the northern side. No ditch surrounds it, no original entrance has been identified, and it appears on only one edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, that of 1909, after which it seems to have slipped quietly out of official record.

Enclosures of this kind are among the more ambiguous features of the Irish archaeological landscape. Without a fosse, the surrounding ditch that typically accompanies a defensive or boundary earthwork, it is difficult to determine the site's original function. It may have served as a farmstead boundary, a livestock enclosure, or something with a more ceremonial or social purpose entirely. The fact that it was captured by the 1909 map suggests it was legible enough at that point to be recorded by surveyors, yet it has accumulated no further documentation since. Its position close to Lough Melvin, a lake that straddles the Leitrim and Fermanagh border and has been a significant feature of this landscape since prehistory, hints that the site's immediate environment was likely well used over a long period, though by whom and in what manner remains open.

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Pete F
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