Earthwork, Ballykelly, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Ballykelly, Co. Clare

In the townland of Ballykelly, in County Clare, there is an earthwork.

That much is known. Beyond the bare fact of its existence and its classification as an archaeological monument, the record is silent, the details undigitised, the story still waiting to be told.

Earthworks of this kind are among the most common and least understood features of the Irish countryside. The category covers a wide range of structures, from the circular banks of ring forts used as enclosed farmsteads in the early medieval period, to the ditched enclosures of moated sites, the raised platforms of house plots, and the subtle ridges left by field systems abandoned centuries ago. Without more specific detail it is impossible to say which of these the Ballykelly earthwork represents, or when it was made, or by whom. Clare is a county with a dense and layered archaeological landscape, and an earthwork in any of its townlands might plausibly belong to almost any period from the Bronze Age onward. For now, this particular example remains a shape in a field, formally recorded but not yet described.

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