Enclosure, Ballycahill, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballycahill, Co. Clare

On the western summit of Ailwee Hill in County Clare, a circular enclosure sits quietly within a landscape that has been shaped and reshaped by human activity across many centuries.

Roughly eleven metres in diameter, it is the kind of feature that passes unnoticed at ground level, revealing itself only from the air, as it did when aerial photography captured it sometime between 2012 and 2018. It belongs to a broader multiperiod field system spread across the hill, meaning that the boundaries, enclosures, and divisions visible here do not all belong to a single era but accumulated over a long stretch of time, layer upon layer, each generation making its mark on the same ground.

The enclosure itself has not been formally dated, but its circular form and hilltop position are consistent with types of enclosure found widely across Ireland from the early medieval period onward. Roughly forty-five metres to the south-west lies a cashel, a stone-walled enclosure of the kind typically associated with early medieval settlement and farming, where the circular wall served both as a boundary and as a degree of protection for whoever lived or worked within. The proximity of the two features, set within the same extensive field system, suggests that this corner of Ailwee Hill was once a considerably more organised and inhabited place than it might appear today. What survives above ground may be fragmentary, but the aerial record shows enough to confirm that the landscape here carries a long memory.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Enclosure, Ballycahill, Co. Clare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement