Enclosure, Commons, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On a slight rise in an exposed stretch of County Clare, sitting within a larger field system, there is a roughly circular enclosure whose defining walls are made not of mortared stonework but of leaning slabs, dry-laid and left to lean at angles that suggest either great age or gradual yielding to the elements.
Enclosures of this kind are among the more quietly puzzling features of the Irish landscape: they may have served as farmsteads, as livestock enclosures, or as something older and less easily categorised, and without excavation the question tends to remain open.
The site first came to formal attention through aerial photography, appearing in an image catalogued as HSL 9104/05, which prompted its inclusion as a potential site in both the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996. A ground inspection carried out in 1999 confirmed what the aerial view had suggested: a drystone enclosure, roughly circular in plan, measuring approximately 18 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west internally, its boundary formed by those characteristic leaning slabs. The slight elevation on which it sits would have given it a modest commanding position within the surrounding field system, though whether that positioning was practical, defensive, or incidental is not recorded.
Visitor Notes
Added by
