Enclosure, Cashla, Co. Galway

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Cashla, Co. Galway

In the undulating grassland of Cashla in County Galway, there is an archaeological site that no longer exists in any visible sense.

A circular enclosure roughly 25 metres in diameter was recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, drawn up in the nineteenth century, but nothing of it can be seen today. No earthwork, no depression, no crop mark visible to a passing walker. It survives only as a cartographic memory, a shape on an old map that once corresponded to something real in the ground.

Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common monument types in the Irish countryside. They range from elaborate stone ringforts, known as cashels or cahers, to simpler earthen raths, all generally associated with early medieval settlement and farming. A diameter of around 25 metres would place this example at the modest end of the scale, perhaps the remains of a single farmstead enclosure. By the time the Ordnance Survey mapmakers passed through, the feature was evidently visible enough to be recorded with some confidence; what happened between that survey and now, whether through agricultural improvement, gradual erosion, or deliberate levelling, is not recorded.

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Pete F
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