Enclosure, Corbally, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Corbally, Co. Galway

In the rough, low-lying grazing land of Corbally in County Galway, a road runs east to west across ground that was once, at least on paper, a circular enclosure roughly 25 metres in diameter.

There is nothing to see now. The surface trace has vanished entirely, and the modern road cuts directly through whatever once stood or was dug here, leaving the site as a kind of archaeological ghost, present only in older cartography.

The first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, produced in Ireland during the nineteenth century as part of one of the most ambitious mapping projects of its time, recorded a circular enclosure at this spot. Enclosures of this type, defined by a ditch, bank, or wall forming a rough ring, appear throughout Ireland in considerable numbers and served a variety of purposes across different periods, from early medieval settlement and farming to ceremonial use in prehistory. Without surviving physical evidence or excavation, it is impossible to say which category this particular example belonged to. The map recorded its existence; the ground no longer confirms it.

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Pete F
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