Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cushacorra, Co. Clare

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cushacorra, Co. Clare

At the point where four townlands meet in County Clare, a boundary does something more than divide land.

The junction of Cushacorra, Pouleenacoona, Tulla, and Bouleevin coincides with what was once a large ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval boundary, typically of earthen bank or stone, that early Irish monastic communities used to define sacred space from the surrounding secular world. That the site sits precisely at this four-way administrative junction is unlikely to be coincidence; such locations were often chosen for their liminal character, sitting outside the clear ownership of any one community.

The enclosure is substantial in its original conception, measuring roughly 100 metres north to south and 80 metres east to west, but it is very poorly preserved. Much of what survives on the western and southern sides is a low grass-covered earthen bank, in places little more than a tenth of a metre above the surrounding ground. On the opposite arc, even that is gone; a steep scarp about 1.8 metres high is the only hint that a boundary once ran there, and it is likely the result of agricultural reclamation works lowering the outer ground level over many generations. A townland boundary wall, 1.2 metres high, has been built directly over the enclosure bank on one side, and a later collapsed field wall crosses the interior, both of them quietly erasing the older lines beneath. The southern edge preserves more of the original character of the place: a church, a small building, and a children's burial ground, known in Ireland as a cillín, a place where unbaptised infants were traditionally interred outside consecrated ground, cluster together there. The enclosure appears as a hachured feature on both the 1842 and 1915 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, meaning its outline was still legible, at least partially, to surveyors well into the twentieth century. A holy well lies roughly 30 metres to the west in Bouleevin townland, and two further enclosures sit within Cushacorra townland, 300 and 400 metres to the south, suggesting this low ridge was a focus of activity over a long period rather than an isolated site.

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