Enclosure, Ballycotteen, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballycotteen, Co. Clare

In the bogland of Ballycotteen in County Clare, a curving arc of carefully placed stone sits quietly on a gentle south-facing slope, its purpose still open to debate.

The structure is tentatively identified as an enclosure, defined by a stretch of wall running from the south-west to the north-west, built from close-fitting rounded boulders with clusters of upright slabs set into it at intervals. What survives measures just over ten metres in detectable length, between roughly half a metre wide and varying in height from under half a metre to just under a metre. It is modest in scale, partially consumed by bog, and easy to overlook.

The wall's curvature hints at a complete circuit, and aerial orthophotographs taken between 2012 and 2018 suggest that a northern arc, running from north-west to north-east, may also be traceable. Enclosures of this kind in Ireland range widely in date and function, from early medieval farmsteads to prehistoric ceremonial spaces, and without excavation this one resists confident classification. What makes its situation quietly compelling is the company it keeps. Approximately 38 metres to the north-west lies a field boundary that may belong to a wider field system, and around 60 metres to the north-east stands a wedge tomb. Wedge tombs are prehistoric megalithic burial monuments, typically dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, constructed with a characteristic tapering chamber wider at one end than the other. Whether the enclosure relates to that older funerary landscape or belongs to an entirely different period of use is unknown, but the proximity is suggestive of a location that people have returned to, and structured, across considerable stretches of time.

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Pete F
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