Enclosure, Blindwell, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
What survives at Blindwell is not much more than a suggestion.
In level grassland on the grounds of the former Blindwell Demesne in County Galway, the remnant of a circular enclosure sits quietly in the landscape, reduced to a single arc of low earthen bank along its northern edge. Without the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map to confirm what once stood here, a casual observer might not register it as archaeology at all.
The OS first edition, surveyed in the nineteenth century, recorded the feature as a roughly circular enclosure approximately twenty-five metres in diameter. Enclosures of this type are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, typically interpreted as the remains of early medieval farmsteads, though some may be considerably older or serve purposes that are harder to pin down. What sets this one apart, modestly, is how little of it remains. The northern bank, low and eroded, is the only surviving element of the circuit. Roughly twenty metres to the south lies an irregular hollow, seventeen metres long and five metres wide, whose relationship to the enclosure is not entirely clear.