Enclosure, Buncrowey, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Buncrowey, Co. Sligo

On the eastern slope of the Easky valley in County Sligo, a roughly D-shaped enclosure sits along the riverward crest of one of the valley's grass-covered terraces, its stone bank still standing up to a metre high on the outside.

What makes this site quietly unusual is not simply its age or its shape, but the sheer density of activity compressed within its modest dimensions, roughly 17.5 metres by 15 metres, and the fact that it shares a wall with a larger enclosure immediately to its west, yet offers no apparent means of passing between the two. Two adjoining spaces with no communicating entrance is not the most intuitive arrangement, and it raises more questions than it answers about how the place was used and by whom.

The interior is organised with some care. An internal dividing wall curves in an arc across the south-western quadrant, creating a subtriangular space accessed through a gap flanked by two orthostats, the term for upright standing stones used as threshold markers or doorjambs. Inside that space, a raised platform carries a semicircular setting of split boulders, interpreted as a possible hut site. A second raised platform occupies the north-western quadrant, and close beside it are the foundations of a rectangular stone-built house. A third building, smaller and irregularly shaped, sits against the enclosure wall in the south-east. The shared wall between this enclosure and its larger neighbour to the west is thicker at its northern and southern ends and narrower in between, a detail that suggests it was built in stages or served more than one structural purpose.

The site belongs to the broader landscape of the Easky valley, a region with a long record of early settlement, and its terraced setting above the river would have offered both visibility and a degree of natural shelter. The layering of platforms, walls, and small buildings within a single enclosure points to repeated use and modification over time, though without excavation it is difficult to say more about the sequence or the period involved.

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Pete F
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