Enclosure, An Carn Mór Thiar, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, An Carn Mór Thiar, Co. Galway

In a gently rolling stretch of Galway farmland, a low grassy bank traces the outline of an enclosure that has been slowly merging with the surrounding fields for centuries.

The shape is roughly subrectangular, measuring approximately 32 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west, and what survives is little more than a stony bank smothered in grass. It is the kind of feature that rewards a careful eye rather than a casual glance.

Enclosures of this type are among the most common archaeological monuments in the Irish landscape. They served a range of purposes depending on their period and context, from the ringforts of early medieval settlement to later stock enclosures and farmstead boundaries. Here, within the interior, there are traces of a possible house site and a further structure, suggesting that this was at some point a domestic space of some kind, a small enclosed settlement rather than a purely agricultural feature. A separate house lies roughly 60 metres to the west, hinting at a loose cluster of activity in the area. The enclosure was noted by McCaffrey in 1952, though by that point it was already poorly preserved, the stony bank having long since lost whatever height and definition it once carried.

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