Enclosure, Curraghaderry, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Curraghaderry, Co. Galway

A road cuts straight through the northern edge of this ancient enclosure in Curraghaderry, as though the modern world simply decided not to go around it.

What remains is a roughly subrectangular earthwork, oriented east to west across about forty metres and north to south across approximately thirty-five, sitting on undulating grassland with bogland stretching away to the south-east. For most visitors passing along that road, there would be nothing obviously remarkable to see; the enclosing bank survives only along the western and north-western arc, while the rest has been levelled over time until only a faint rise in the ground betrays the original outline.

Enclosures of this kind are among the more quietly persistent features of the Irish landscape. They may have served as farmsteads, ceremonial spaces, or places of local assembly, and without excavation it is rarely possible to say with confidence which purpose any particular example served. What gives this one additional interest is the presence within its interior of a cillín, a burial ground associated in Irish tradition with unbaptised infants and others who, by the customs of the time, could not be interred in consecrated ground. These informal burial sites, sometimes called children's burial grounds, are found across Ireland, often located at or near older earthworks, perhaps because such places already carried some sense of separation from everyday use. The Ordnance Survey's third-edition six-inch map, published in 1930, recorded the enclosure clearly enough for its outline to be traced, and faint traces of what may be a second, outer bank are still visible at the south-eastern edge, hinting at a more complex original structure than what survives today.

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Pete F
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