Enclosure, Carrowcor, Co. Sligo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrowcor, Co. Sligo

On a north-south ridge in Carrowcor, County Sligo, a shallow curve of earthwork lies buried beneath dense overgrowth, easily mistaken for a natural fold in the pasture.

What it likely represents is the surviving western arc of a circular enclosure, somewhere between fifteen and eighteen metres in diameter, that has been slowly receding from view for centuries. Its companion, a rath sitting immediately to the west at a slightly higher point on the same ridge, is the more obvious presence; the enclosure, lower down on a level terrace and bounded by a steep drop to the south-west, survives only as a remnant.

A rath is a ringfort, typically a circular earthen bank enclosing a domestic space, and the proximity of this smaller enclosure to one suggests the two features may have formed part of the same agricultural or residential complex in early medieval Ireland. The enclosure itself was recorded on the 1913 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where cartographers marked it as a hachured arc curving from south to north-west, a notation indicating a raised or banked feature. That map evidence confirms the earthwork was still legible over a century ago, though what can be seen today is considerably less distinct, the bank discernible only as a gentle curvature beneath the vegetation rather than any dramatic earthen wall.

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Pete F
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