Enclosure, Ardnagla, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
In the townland of Ardnagla in County Clare, an enclosure sits on the landscape, recorded and mapped but largely unaccompanied by the kind of detail that usually surrounds such sites.
An enclosure, in the archaeological sense, is broadly any defined area bounded by a bank, ditch, wall, or combination of these, and they appear across Ireland in forms ranging from prehistoric ringforts to early medieval ecclesiastical enclosures to simple agricultural boundaries. Which category this particular one belongs to is, for now, an open question.
The source material for this site is, at present, thin. The monument is recognised and carries an official record, but the descriptive information that would normally tell us its dimensions, its probable date, its condition, or its relationship to the surrounding landscape has not yet been made publicly available. Clare is a county with considerable archaeological depth, from the Burren's limestone pavements dotted with megalithic tombs to the early Christian remains scattered across its interior townlands, and an enclosure in Ardnagla fits quietly into that broader pattern without, for the moment, giving much away about itself.