Enclosure, An Inse Mhór, Co. Cork

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Enclosures

Enclosure, An Inse Mhór, Co. Cork

On a south-facing slope at An Inse Mhór in County Cork, a small D-shaped enclosure sits quietly within a web of old field boundaries, its eastern wall still standing to a reasonable height while the rest of its perimeter barely clears the surface of the surrounding bog.

That contrast alone says something interesting: one side of this structure has survived in relatively good order, a drystone wall a metre thick at its base and rising to 1.2 metres, while the remainder has been all but swallowed, visible only as a low stony ridge protruding from the peat. The interior is roughly level, with a slight raised area toward the south-west corner.

The enclosure measures around twelve metres east to west and sits on a terrace within rough hill grazing, the kind of upland landscape that preserves things precisely because no one has had much reason to disturb it. Nearby, approximately six metres to the south-west, the remains of a hut site have also been recorded, suggesting this was once part of a small working settlement rather than a solitary feature. Enclosures of this type are found across Ireland in upland and marginal terrain, and were typically used to define a domestic or agricultural space, sometimes associated with seasonal grazing activity known as booley farming, where communities moved livestock to higher ground in summer months. The network of field boundaries surrounding the site points to a landscape that was once more intensively organised than its current rough grazed appearance suggests.

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Pete F
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