Ecclesiastical enclosure, Finnor More, Co. Clare

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Finnor More, Co. Clare

On a low hillock in Finnor More, County Clare, a circular earthen enclosure quietly holds two of the most characteristic features of early Irish ecclesiastical sites: a burial ground and a holy well.

What makes the arrangement at Finnor More particularly worth noting is that the holy well sits not outside the graveyard boundary, as is commonly the case, but within it, tucked at the eastern edge of the enclosure. That detail alone suggests a deliberate, layered use of this ground that has persisted across centuries.

The enclosure itself measures roughly 82 metres across on a north-northwest to south-southeast axis, a diameter that places it comfortably within the range typical of early medieval monastic or ecclesiastical settlements in Ireland, where a roughly circular or oval bank, known as a cashel when built in stone or simply an enclosure bank when earthen, would define the sacred precinct. Here the boundary takes two different forms depending on where you stand: a built-up earthen bank, between 6.3 and 8 metres wide, defines the southeastern to southern arc, while a natural or cut scarp, rising to 1.7 metres, forms the boundary to the northwest and north. The bank itself is modest in height, barely 20 centimetres above the interior ground level, though it stands between 60 and 90 centimetres above the exterior, suggesting that the hillock's own topography does much of the work of enclosure on the northern side. The combination of constructed bank and natural scarp is a practical arrangement that early ecclesiastical communities frequently employed when the landscape already offered some degree of definition.

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