Concentric enclosure, Deelin More, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Concentric enclosure, Deelin More, Co. Clare

On a south-facing slope below Ailwee Hill in the uplands of County Clare, two concentric rings of earthen bank quietly trace a pattern that neither the 1840 nor the 1916 Ordnance Survey maps thought worth recording.

The outer ring has been partly overwritten by a later drystone wall running from the northwest to the southeast, and somewhere between the banks an uneven corridor of ground, wider and level to the north, sloping and broader to the south, separates the two circuits. There is no definite entrance through the inner bank. That absence alone marks the place as something worth pausing over.

The structure is a concentric enclosure, a form in which two or more roughly circular banks enclose a central area, with the space between them often interpreted as a zone for livestock, cultivation, or some activity distinct from what happened at the centre. Here the inner bank measures roughly 23 metres east to west and 21.5 metres north to south, constructed of earth with a considerable amount of stone worked through it. The outer bank is of similar construction but considerably less well preserved. The overall diameter of the whole monument runs to 46.7 metres. What the interior once held is unclear; the ground inside is uneven and gives little away. Two parallel tumbled walls extend eastward from the inner bank toward the outer, though these are probably later additions rather than original fabric. A substantial contemporary wall abuts the outer bank at the southwest and meanders south, where it meets another wall aligned roughly north to south. A cluster of field enclosures to the northeast, east, and southeast appears to have grown up in association with the concentric enclosure over time, and a small separate enclosure sits just ten metres to the northwest, suggesting that this upland corner of Deelin More was once a more organised and inhabited landscape than its current appearance might suggest.

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