Enclosure, Ballynalacka, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballynalacka, Co. Galway

Beneath a working farmyard in north Galway, there was once a circular enclosure roughly forty metres across, sitting on a low knoll above the surrounding farmland.

It is the kind of site that would have drawn immediate attention on the old Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, where it appears as a neat ring, and that might once have been locally significant enough to leave traces in field names or memory. Today, nothing of it can be seen. A silage slab, a feeding unit, and a milking parlour have been built directly over the site, erasing whatever earthwork or bank once marked the perimeter.

The only surviving hint of the original form is a curving modern field wall that may, according to the published archaeological inventory of north Galway, follow the arc of the enclosure's south-eastern to south-western edge, as if whoever built it simply continued along a boundary that was already there. The six-inch maps also recorded a feature labelled 'Cave' near the centre of the enclosure, which archaeologists interpret as a probable souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically associated with early medieval settlement, used for storage or concealment. No surface trace of that feature survives either. The site sits in undulating farmland typical of this part of County Galway, and the low knoll it occupied would once have made the enclosure a visually prominent feature in the landscape, the kind of raised, defined space that tends to indicate long, deliberate use of a particular piece of ground.

There is nothing to visit here now. The archaeology is gone, replaced by the functional infrastructure of a modern farm. What remains is the outline on old maps, a field wall that might or might not follow a very old curve, and the knowledge that the landscape held something before it was built over.

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Pete F
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