Ecclesiastical enclosure, Drumcliff, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Drumcliff, Co. Clare

On top of Ryan Hill in County Clare, an ordinary-looking stretch of farmland conceals a carefully layered early ecclesiastical enclosure, its boundaries still readable in the ground if you know what to look for.

The overall shape is a large D, roughly 140 metres east to west and 100 metres north to south, with a straight northern edge that hints at deliberate planning rather than gradual accumulation. What makes the site particularly interesting is that it is not simply one enclosure but several nested within one another, each defined by low earthen banks and scarps, the kind of subtle earthworks that centuries of ploughing and field improvement have reduced but not quite erased.

The outermost boundary survives best at the south-west, where an earthen bank about five metres wide still stands to an external height of one and a half metres, accompanied by an outer fosse, a defensive or boundary ditch, with a base width of three and a half metres. Moving inward, a later field wall cuts across the site from north-east to south-west, bisecting the enclosure and complicating the picture considerably. South of that wall, a further inner scarp traces a roughly circular area about 70 metres across, and within that sits a small rectangular zone, approximately 32 metres by 18 metres, bounded by its own scarp and a slight bank. It is in the northern part of this innermost rectangle that a possible church once stood, the kind of progression from outer enclosure to inner sanctum that is characteristic of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, where successive boundaries marked gradations of sacred space. Drumcliff church, a separate and distinct structure, lies about 700 metres to the south-west, suggesting that this hilltop enclosure belongs to the same broader religious landscape without being directly associated with that later building.

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Pete F
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