Enclosure, Alternan Park, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Enclosures
On the western edge of a wooded ravine in County Sligo, a small rectangular enclosure sits so quietly in a pasture field that most people would walk straight past it.
The earthen bank that once defined three of its four sides has been levelled almost to nothing, surviving now as a barely discernible sod-covered rise, roughly two to two and a half metres wide. To the south, a shallow depression marks the line of a fosse, the external ditch that would originally have accompanied the bank, and a faint rise beyond it hints at the remnants of an outer bank as well. The eastern side of the enclosure has no man-made boundary at all; instead, the ground simply drops away precipitously into the ravine below.
The enclosure measures roughly twenty metres on its longer axis and fourteen on its shorter, oriented broadly north-northwest to south-southeast. Its position is quietly deliberate. It occupies the northeast corner of a pasture field on top of a ridge, with the sea lying approximately two hundred metres to the north and the Ballymeeny River running along the floor of the ravine to the east. Just north of the enclosure the ravine slope eases enough to allow relatively comfortable descent to the river, suggesting the site was chosen with an eye on both elevation and access. Earthen enclosures of this kind are found across Ireland and served a range of purposes over many centuries, from agricultural enclosures and settlement boundaries to enclosures associated with ritual or funerary activity, though the specific function and date of this example remain unrecorded. The interior slopes gently downward from west to east, following the natural lie of the ridge.