Enclosure, Coolnatullagh, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Coolnatullagh, Co. Clare

On the southern slopes of Gortaclare Mountain in County Clare, a stone enclosure sits largely consumed by hazel scrub, its full extent still unknown.

That ambiguity is itself part of what makes the site quietly compelling. Researchers have been unable to trace its complete outline precisely because the vegetation has closed in so thoroughly, leaving the structure in a kind of suspended uncertainty, present but not fully legible.

The enclosure sits at the foot of a terrace and forms part of a broader, extensive field system on these slopes, suggesting this was once an actively managed agricultural landscape. An enclosure of this type typically describes a defined area bounded by an earthen bank or stone wall, used historically for purposes ranging from livestock management to settlement. A plan of the area produced by Eogan in 2002 shows two such enclosures here, and Carey, writing in 2009, attempted a closer description of this one, though the hazel overgrowth defeated any precise measurement. What Carey did identify, at the south-eastern edge, is a narrow gap approximately half a metre wide, framed by two upright stone slabs each roughly a metre tall. That gap is likely the original entrance. A second enclosure lies around thirty-five metres to the south-west, and mound walls survive immediately to the south, fragments of the same vanished field order.

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