Enclosure, Kilcloony, Co. Galway

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Kilcloony, Co. Galway

On a low hillock in the grassland of what was once the Quarrymount Demesne in Kilcloony, County Galway, there is an enclosure that exists now only on paper.

Nothing breaks the surface to suggest it is there. No earthwork, no ring of stones, no dip in the turf. The site survives solely as a marking on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1932, where it appears as a circular enclosure roughly forty metres in diameter.

Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape. They were built across a long sweep of prehistory and into the early medieval period, serving variously as enclosed farmsteads, ceremonial spaces, or places of burial. What once stood or was raised at Kilcloony is unknown. The map record suggests it was still legible as a feature in the landscape at some point before the 1932 survey was completed, but no visible surface trace survives today. Whether it was levelled by agricultural improvement, absorbed into the managed grounds of the demesne, or simply worn away over time, cannot be said with certainty. The Quarrymount Demesne, within whose former bounds the hillock sits, provides the only locating context the record offers.

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