Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare

On the western edge of a plateau in County Clare, a low earthen bank traces an oval shape across rough pasture, its outline most readily legible not to the eye on the ground but to the aerial camera.

The enclosure measures roughly 35 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, and it sits within a multiperiod field system, meaning that the landscape around it carries the layered imprints of activity from several different eras. The bank itself is subtle enough that it went unrecorded until satellite and aerial photography, specifically imagery captured between 2011 and 2018, revealed its form from above.

What gives the site its quiet interest is partly its position and partly its company. It stands just 7 to 8 metres east of the townland boundary between Commons and Meggagh West, a boundary that may itself follow much older territorial lines. Some 134 metres to the south-west lie two related monuments: a cashel and a souterrain. A cashel is a stone-walled enclosure of early medieval date, typically used to define a farmstead or settlement, while a souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, often associated with the same period and built for storage or refuge. The proximity of all three features within the same rough pasture suggests this plateau supported a more organised and inhabited landscape than its present emptiness implies.

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