Enclosure, Corlackan, Co. Galway

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Corlackan, Co. Galway

On a low hillside in the pastureland of Corlackan in north Galway, there is an ancient enclosure that has very nearly ceased to exist.

Roughly forty metres across and originally circular, it survives today only as a faint degraded scarp, a slight raising or dropping of the ground surface, accompanied by the remnant of an external fosse, which is essentially a ditch dug around the outside of the enclosure to reinforce or define its boundary. Even these traces are only visible along the southern to south-western arc. A field boundary, one of the countless low stone or earthen divisions that cross the Irish countryside, has been laid directly over the enclosing element from the west around to the north-east, effectively overwriting it. Elsewhere, nothing at all survives above ground.

Enclosures of this kind, typically interpreted as the remains of early medieval ringforts or raths, were once among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country. They served as defended farmsteads, enclosing a household and its associated structures within an earthen bank and ditch. The Corlackan example, at around forty metres in diameter, falls within the typical size range for such sites. What makes it notable is not anything it still possesses, but rather how thoroughly it has been absorbed back into the working landscape, its original form now barely legible beneath the accumulated adjustments of later centuries of farming.

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Pete F
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