Enclosure, Cloonagleavragh, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloonagleavragh, Co. Sligo

In a gently rolling stretch of pasture in County Sligo, a low D-shaped earthwork sits on a slight westward-facing slope, its outline still legible after what is likely well over a thousand years.

What makes it quietly arresting is not its scale but its details. The enclosing bank of earth and stone, just over a metre wide and only a quarter of a metre high on its interior face, has been reinforced on its outer edge with large blocks of conglomerate, a sedimentary rock made up of cemented fragments, suggesting that whoever built this place took some care with its construction, even if no trace of an outer ditch, or fosse, now survives at ground level.

The enclosure measures roughly thirty metres along its longer axis and eighteen metres across, a modest but deliberate space. Where the bank itself has eroded or been reduced, an earthen scarp, essentially a steep natural or cut slope, continues to define the perimeter, hinting that the original boundary was once more substantial. The revetting of conglomerate blocks appears not just along the main bank but also at the base of this scarp on the southern and northwestern sides, which suggests a consistent effort to stabilise the structure. No original entrance can now be identified. Concealed within the southwestern portion of the interior are the remains of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, used for storage and possibly as a place of refuge. The presence of a souterrain places the enclosure firmly in the tradition of early medieval ringforts, farmsteads enclosed by banks or ditches that were the dominant form of rural settlement in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

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