Enclosure, Cloghane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloghane, Co. Kerry

On the Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map of 1892, a roughly circular feature sits in the poorly drained pasture outside Cloghane in County Kerry, its curved banks traced with the quiet confidence of Victorian cartographers who recorded what they could see.

By the time anyone went to look for it on the ground, it was gone.

The map shows a near-circular area roughly 19 metres across on a northwest to southeast axis, defined by a curved inner bank and the remains of a second outer curved bank. The spacing between them, around 6.5 metres wide, suggests the feature may once have included a fosse, the term for a defensive or boundary ditch typically dug to accompany an earthen bank in early Irish enclosures. The overall form is consistent with the kind of enclosed settlement that appears across Ireland from the early medieval period onward, though the Cloghane example was never confirmed in any detail. When the site was visited in 2000, the ground had been levelled entirely. The only thing remaining was a very slight depression, approximately 15 metres in diameter, a faint circular memory pressed into the earth where something more substantial had once stood.

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Pete F
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