Enclosure, Caltra, Co. Galway

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Caltra, Co. Galway

In a field in Caltra, County Galway, the faint outline of an oval enclosure survives only just, and then barely.

Most of it has been levelled almost entirely flat. What remains is a low scarp tracing part of the perimeter from west through north to south, and beyond that a very shallow fosse, the term for a ditch or trench that would once have defined and defended the outer edge of such an enclosure. Elsewhere, the ground offers nothing: no bank, no raised lip, no surviving earthwork to catch the eye.

The enclosure measures roughly 49.5 metres north to south and 38.5 metres east to west, placing it in the size range typical of a ringfort or related early medieval settlement enclosure, the kind of circular or oval earthwork that was once among the most common features of the Irish landscape. This one sits immediately north of a cillín, a children's burial ground, which is itself a notable presence in the adjacent field. The two monuments together suggest a landscape with a long and layered history of human use, even if much of that history has been quietly erased. A modern field fence and drain, running east to west, now cut the monument cleanly in half, and the southern interior is further divided by an earthen boundary running off at right angles. These later agricultural interventions have done as much to obscure the monument's original form as centuries of ploughing.

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Pete F
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