Enclosure, Derrydonnell More, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
In the scrubland of Derrydonnell More, a low and largely illegible ring of stone sits on a slight rise in the ground.
What survives is a roughly oval enclosure, measuring around 33 metres across its longest axis, defined by a drystone wall that was once substantial, around two metres wide, but is now badly disturbed and heavily overgrown. Drystone enclosures of this kind, built without mortar, were a common feature of the Irish landscape across many centuries, used variously as settlement boundaries, farmsteads, or cattle enclosures, though assigning a precise function or date to any individual example is rarely straightforward. This one offers little to help narrow things down.
The site's condition is poor enough that only the south-western arc of the wall retains anything close to its original form. Elsewhere, the stonework has collapsed or been obscured by vegetation, and a modern trackway cuts directly across the enclosure from north-west to south-east, bisecting what would once have been an enclosed interior space. That kind of intrusion is not unusual for sites of this sort; when a feature loses its legibility in the landscape, it tends to lose its protection too, and field tracks and agricultural improvements have quietly dismantled countless such enclosures over generations. The Galway Archaeological Survey, carried out in association with University College Galway, recorded the site in its current state.