Enclosure, Cloghadoolarty South, Co. Limerick

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloghadoolarty South, Co. Limerick

In a field in Cloghadoolarty South, County Limerick, there is an earthwork that the Ordnance Survey map calls Cashel Mangan Fort, though the name does relatively little to explain what you are actually looking at.

The monument is D-shaped, with a straight eastern side and a curved western arc, and its interior sits as a low raised platform above the surrounding ground. Around that platform runs a fosse, which is simply a ditch cut to define and defend the enclosure. By the time a formal description was recorded, the site had already been substantially altered, parts of it quietly undone by agricultural activity across an unknowable number of seasons.

The description that survives comes from a survey conducted by O'Kelly in 1942 to 1943 and published the following year. At that point the western and north-western sections of the fosse had been partially levelled, some of the interior platform had been removed, and the displaced material had been dumped just outside the perimeter in a way that, from a distance, could easily be mistaken for a short outer bank. The overall dimensions recorded were approximately 64 metres east to west and 51 metres north to south, making it a substantial enclosure even in its compromised state. Whether it began as a ringfort, a cashel, or some other form of enclosed settlement is not specified in the available record, though enclosures of this general type are associated across Ireland with early medieval farmsteads and the organisation of land around a defended household.

The outline of the monument remains visible in Digital Globe aerial photographs, which is often the clearest way to read earthworks that have been damaged at ground level. On the ground itself, the surviving fosse sections and the slight rise of the platform may still be detectable to an attentive eye, particularly in low winter light when shadows pick out subtle changes in topography. The site sits within private farmland, so access would require the landowner's permission. For those unable to visit in person, the aerial record offers a reasonable sense of the enclosure's original geometry and something of what has been lost.

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Pete F
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