Enclosure, Ardour, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
On a low hillock in the grasslands of Ardour in north County Galway, there is an ancient enclosure that has very nearly ceased to exist.
Not ruined so much as dissolved, it survives now mostly as a cartographic memory, recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps as a circular enclosure roughly 35 metres in diameter. Stand on the spot today and there is almost nothing to see.
Enclosures of this type, sometimes called ring forts or raths depending on their construction, were among the most common forms of settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. They were defined by an earthen bank and, often, an outer ditch or fosse. Here, the fosse, a shallow defensive or boundary ditch dug around the outside of an enclosure, still traces a faint arc to the south-east, just beyond a band of distinctive vegetation that marks where the old boundary once ran. That change in plant growth is itself a kind of archive: soil disturbed or compressed centuries ago can alter drainage and nutrient levels in ways that persist long after any visible earthwork has been levelled, ploughed, or simply worn away. Beyond that narrow vegetation band and its accompanying hollow, no surface trace of the original structure survives.