Enclosure, Clooncallow, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Clooncallow, Co. Longford

Half of this enclosure has simply vanished.

What the Ordnance Survey once recorded on its six-inch maps as a neat oval earthwork, roughly twenty-five to thirty metres across from east to west and fifteen metres north to south, now survives only as a semicircular ghost of itself, the southern portion so thoroughly eroded that no trace of it can be read in the ground at all. What remains is the northern half, and even that is badly degraded, its defining feature a scarp, cut into the slope, that stands no higher than forty centimetres at its western end and reaches just a metre at its highest point to the north. Three mature beech trees have grown up along the line of this scarp, their roots now intertwined with whatever archaeology lies beneath.

The enclosure sits in pasture on the northern side of a low rise or small ridge in Clooncallow, County Longford, straddling a natural break of slope. This positioning was deliberate: the southern half, now lost, would have occupied the relatively level ground at the top of the rise, while the northern half slopes gently downhill. Enclosures of this kind, typically formed by an earthen bank or a cut scarp defining a roughly circular or oval space, are found across Ireland and are often associated with early medieval settlement, though they can also relate to agricultural or ceremonial use. Without excavation it is impossible to say which category this one belongs to. The ground immediately surrounding it is waterlogged in places, with poorly drained areas to the north-east, south, and west, which may partly explain why the southern half has fared so badly. At the centre of what remains, a tree stump and a lone boulder sit in the interior, the only upstanding features in a landscape that has been quietly reclaiming the site for a very long time.

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Pete F
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