Enclosure, Ballyglass, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
On the northern slope of a small hillock in the bogland of Ballyglass, County Galway, there is an ancient enclosure that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
The earthwork is so poorly preserved that its outline registers only faintly on the ground, yet measured out it stretches roughly 80 metres east to west and 65 metres north to south, making it a substantial feature in its original form. Several later field fences cut straight across it, indifferent to whatever came before.
The enclosure is defined by a scarp, a low step in the ground where the earth has been shaped or has settled to form a boundary, which rises to about a metre in height. Just outside this runs a fosse, essentially a ditch, measuring between 3.5 and 4 metres wide. Together these two elements, the raised inner edge and the external ditch, are the classic signature of an early enclosed settlement, the kind erected across Ireland throughout the early medieval period as farmsteads, defended homesteads, or gathering places. The subcircular shape, neither a perfect ring nor a rough oval, is typical of such sites. What brought people to this particular hillock in the bog, and what they built or kept within the enclosure, the ground no longer says.