Enclosure, Carrownrush, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrownrush, Co. Sligo

In a gently undulating pasture in County Sligo, a subtly raised patch of ground outlines the ghost of an ancient enclosure.

It is easy to miss: the bank of earth and stone that defines it rises barely twenty centimetres above the interior level, and along several stretches it has disappeared entirely, leaving only a low scarp to suggest where the boundary once ran. What survives is a roughly D-shaped area measuring eighteen metres east to west and fourteen metres north to south, the kind of modest, unassuming feature that farming and centuries of weather have brought to the very edge of legibility.

Enclosures of this type are common across the Irish landscape, though rarely in such a denuded state. They were typically used for settlement, stock management, or as ancillary spaces attached to nearby habitation, and this one sits immediately to the north-east of a companion enclosure, suggesting the two formed part of a small, loosely organised complex. The original entrance appears to have been at the north-north-west, marked by a gap roughly two and a half metres wide between a pair of outshot banks, short projecting lengths of bank that flanked the opening and funnelled movement through it. Inside, in the south-west quadrant, the remains of a rectangular hut site survive, a further indication that this was once a lived-in or at least actively used space. The enclosing bank, where it does survive, is about 1.6 metres wide, and there is no visible trace of a fosse, the external ditch that often accompanied such constructions, at ground level.

The site sits in ordinary pasture, and its remains are subtle enough that close attention is needed to distinguish the surviving scarps and bank fragments from the natural roll of the ground. The associated rectangular hut site in the interior and the nearby companion enclosure give the wider area a quiet density that is easy to overlook from a distance.

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