Enclosure, Cummer, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
About 150 metres south of Cummer Castle, in a field broken up by rock outcrop, the ground holds the faint outline of a settlement that most walkers would pass without a second glance.
What survives is a D-shaped enclosure, roughly 44 metres across on its widest axis, its boundary once formed by a continuous bank of earth and stone. That boundary is now badly degraded: part of it has collapsed to foundation lines alone, and a gap opens across the north-eastern arc where the original enclosing element has effectively disappeared. The overall shape, the internal division, and the buried traces of two houses are still legible if you know what to look for, but the site asks something of the eye.
Enclosures of this kind, defined by an earthen or stone bank and sometimes incorporating a ditch, are a recurring feature of the Irish rural landscape and can date anywhere from the early medieval period onward. At Cummer, a low bank running roughly north to south may represent an original internal division of the space, separating the eastern portion from the rest. It is in that eastern section that the remains of a small rectangular house survive as a grassed-over bank, its footprint measured at approximately 7.9 metres long and 3.6 metres wide, set against the enclosure's inner edge. Around 8 metres to the south lie the foundations of a second, considerably larger house, orientated on a north-east to south-west axis and measuring some 14.5 metres by 7 metres. The proximity of the enclosure to Cummer Castle raises the possibility of a functional or chronological connection between the two, though nothing in the surviving fabric settles that question.