Enclosure, Corrafaireen, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Corrafaireen, Co. Galway

On a north-facing slope in Corrafaireen, somewhere in the limestone scrubland of north County Galway, two stone enclosures sit quietly deteriorating in the undergrowth.

The larger of the two is almost circular, measuring roughly 19 metres north to south and 18 metres east to west, its boundary a low and narrow stone wall no more than 75 centimetres high and a metre wide at its broadest. It is poorly preserved, heavily overgrown, and easy to miss entirely.

About 35 metres to the north of it sits a second, smaller enclosure, around 8 metres in diameter, with a wall that is somewhat better preserved, rising to about 1.2 metres and reaching 1.5 metres in width. The suggestion is that this smaller structure may have functioned as a house. Circular stone enclosures of this general type are scattered across the Irish landscape and are typically associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a confident date or function to any individual example. The larger enclosure here may have served as a farmyard or cattle pound, with the smaller structure providing shelter nearby, a domestic arrangement that would have been unremarkable in its time but is now reduced to low walls sinking back into the rock and scrub.

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Pete F
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