Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare

In a stretch of flat Clare pastureland, a small ring of stone sits on a gentle rise, easy to overlook and hard to date with certainty.

The enclosure is subcircular, with an internal diameter of just nine metres, and is defined by a low, even bank of stone and earth. That bank measures between one and 1.4 metres wide, rising only thirty centimetres on the interior and between forty and eighty centimetres on the outer face. Inside, the ground is slightly hollow and rocky beneath its grass cover, giving the impression that whatever once occupied the space has long since settled or been removed.

Small enclosures of this kind appear throughout the Irish landscape and are notoriously difficult to assign to a single period or purpose. Some are the remains of early medieval farmsteads, others may be earlier field boundaries or stock enclosures, and the distinction is rarely clear without excavation. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is its relationship to the surrounding landscape. Roughly sixty-five metres to the north-west sits a cashel, a type of stone-walled enclosure associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically circular and more substantial in construction. The proximity of the two structures suggests this corner of Commons townland may have held more activity in the past than its present emptiness implies, though whether the enclosure and the cashel were contemporary or connected in function remains an open question.

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Pete F
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