Sheepfold, Erriff, Co. Leitrim
Co. Leitrim |
Farm Buildings
On a Leitrim plateau, beside a small rectangular lake sitting in a hollow, there is an oval enclosure that would be easy to walk past without a second thought.
Covered in grass and heather, its low drystone walls rise only about half a metre from the ground, and a ten-metre section along the eastern to southern perimeter has disappeared entirely, leaving the structure open to the weather and to whatever livestock might once have drifted through. It is a sheepfold, or at least what remains of one, and its quiet incompleteness is part of what makes it worth pausing over.
The fold measures roughly twenty metres north to south and fifteen metres east to west internally, with walls about forty centimetres thick. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful stacking and interlocking of stones, was the standard method for enclosures of this kind across upland Ireland. Folds like this one were working structures, used to gather, sort, or shelter sheep during lambing or shearing. Their builders were usually farming families working land that, at this altitude, was marginal at best. The plateau setting, with its small rectangular lake nearby, suggests a landscape used seasonally, the kind of ground that might support summer grazing but little else. The lake itself, approximately fifty-five metres east to west and forty metres north to south, sits in a hollow about forty metres to the north-east of the fold, close enough to have served as a water source for animals penned within.