Enclosure, Caherfadda, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Caherfadda, Co. Clare

On a gently southward-sloping expanse of limestone pavement in County Clare, beneath a canopy of hazel scrub, a roughly oval enclosure sits quietly within what appears to be a field system that accumulated over several distinct periods of human activity.

What makes the place arresting is not any single dramatic feature but the layered evidence of different purposes pressed into the same patch of stone, each one reading like a marginal note added to an older text.

The enclosure itself measures approximately 48 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, defined by a wall of large, loose limestone blocks laid flat and stacked to no more than two or three courses. The construction is irregular rather than formal, the blocks varying in size and arrangement, which suggests a pragmatic rather than ceremonial function. At the north-east, however, the character shifts: a single large slab, some 2.6 metres long and up to 1.6 metres high, has been set upright on its edge, giving the wall an angular corner at that point. Tucked into this corner is a small corral, roughly 12 by 11 metres, its walls built from straight lines of upright slabs, the kind of enclosure within an enclosure that implies the managing of animals. Towards the south-east of the main space, a rectangular sunken hollow, about 2.2 metres by 1.6 metres and dropping to a depth of over a metre, is thought to be a quarry, its geometry too deliberate to be natural. To the west, a large annexe, approximately 60 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, abuts the enclosure wall and shares its construction style; overgrown with hazel now, it contains a longer quarry cut of its own. And roughly 15 metres further west again, beyond the annexe, stands a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument that in Ireland is generally associated with the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Its proximity is unlikely to be incidental, though precisely what relationship it once held with the enclosure and its field system remains an open question. Ordnance Survey maps from 1897 and 1920 show parts of the enclosure already recorded, which means the structure was visible and legible on the ground at least that far back, though its actual origins reach considerably further.

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Pete F
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