Enclosure, Ardmore, Co. Roscommon

Co. Roscommon |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ardmore, Co. Roscommon

In the level pasture of Ardmore, County Roscommon, the ground gives itself away only if you know how to read it.

A slight drop in the earth, a subtle ridge, the ghost of a ditch: these are the traces of a D-shaped enclosure roughly 45 metres across, its straight southeastern side running for approximately 40 metres before the outline curves back around to complete the form. It is not a dramatic ruin. There are no walls, no upright stones. What survives is topography, the quiet language of scarps and hollows that aerial and satellite imagery has proven far better at reading than the eye on the ground.

The site was reported by Jean-Charles Caillere and is visible in MapGenie satellite imagery dating from 2013 to 2018, which reveals both the enclosure's D-shaped plan and the traces of a possible outer fosse, the term for a defensive or boundary ditch, running along its edge. Enclosures of this general type are among the most common, and most poorly understood, monument classes in the Irish landscape. They may represent early medieval settlement, stock enclosures, or features of entirely different periods and functions. What makes this example quietly interesting is the evidence of later interference: a disused trackway, or possibly a levelled field boundary, appears to overlie the southeastern limits of the enclosure and continues away to the northeast, suggesting that long after the enclosure ceased to function as whatever it originally was, the land around it continued to be worked, divided, and crossed, gradually burying its edges under the routines of ordinary farming. A possible second enclosure has been identified approximately 230 metres to the west, raising the question of whether these features were ever related, though the notes do not go so far as to claim a connection.

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Pete F
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