Enclosure, Corrspark, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
There is something quietly thought-provoking about a monument that has been almost entirely consumed by the landscape around it.
On a gentle south-facing slope in the pastureland of Corrspark in County Galway, what survives of a probable rectangular enclosure amounts to little more than a degraded scarp, the ghost of a fosse, and faint traces of what may once have been an outer bank at the north-west. A road now cuts clean through the monument at both its north-west and south-east edges, and to the north of that road, no surface trace remains at all.
An enclosure of this kind would typically have served as a defined boundary around a settlement, farmstead, or site of significance. The form here, roughly rectangular and measuring some 43 metres along its north-west to south-west axis, sets it apart from the more familiar circular ringfort found throughout Ireland. A fosse is simply a ditch, often dug to reinforce or define a boundary, with the upcast material piled to one side to form a bank. That both features are now so heavily degraded speaks to centuries of agricultural use, and possibly to the attentions of the road that bisects the site. The monument was recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway, Volume II, covering North Galway, compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra, and Paul Gosling, published in 1999.
For anyone passing through this part of north Galway, the site offers very little to the untrained eye. The surviving earthworks are subtle enough that knowing roughly what to look for, a slight change in ground level, a shallow depression hinting at the fosse, is more or less essential.