Enclosure, Ballyelly, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballyelly, Co. Clare

At the centre of this roughly oval enclosure on the Burren limestone uplands sits a wedge tomb, a megalithic burial monument typically dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, placed within a slightly sunken linear depression as though the later enclosure wall was built to frame, or perhaps to acknowledge, something already ancient.

The enclosure itself measures roughly 85 metres on its longer axis and is defined by a double wall with a rubble core, now partially grassed over. That a monument already thousands of years old should find itself enclosed and apparently incorporated into a later landscape arrangement is not unusual in Ireland, but it remains quietly strange to encounter it in such direct, spatial terms.

The site sits within what appears to be an extensive multiperiod field system, meaning the surrounding landscape carries the accumulated marks of many different phases of farming and settlement across a very long span of time. The Burren as a whole is well known for this kind of layered archaeology, where thin soils over exposed limestone have preserved ancient boundaries rather than burying or destroying them. The enclosure was reported by Michael Lynch, and its walls, running along the edge of a natural limestone terrace from the north-east around to the south, take advantage of the local topography in a way that suggests careful siting. A later wall cutting across the southern half of the enclosure shows that the space was subdivided at some point after it was first laid out, and a modern field boundary runs just outside the perimeter on the south-east to west-south-west side, the living landscape still pressing up against the old. A hut site, the remains of what was likely a simple stone-walled structure, lies roughly eight metres to the north-east of the tomb, adding another layer to a sequence of occupation that is not yet fully understood.

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Pete F
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