Enclosure, Derrynavahagh, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrynavahagh, Co. Clare

In the Caher Valley of County Clare, pressed against the south-western exterior of an ancient stone ringfort, sits a low earthen bank that may be all that remains of a forgotten annexe.

It is an easy thing to overlook, a slight rise in rough pasture land, but its position is deliberate. Annexes of this kind were sometimes attached to cashels, the dry-stone circular enclosures that served as defended farmsteads across early medieval Ireland, perhaps to pen livestock, to separate certain activities from the main enclosure, or simply to extend usable space. This one was noted during an inspection in 1999, cautiously recorded as a "possible" annexe rather than a certainty, which is in itself a quiet reminder of how much of the Irish landscape remains genuinely unresolved.

The site sits roughly 300 metres to the east of the Caher River, in ground that is partly rough, partly improved pasture. Karst uplands, the bare limestone terrain so characteristic of the Burren and its margins, rise on both the eastern and western sides of the valley, giving the location a particular quality of enclosure. Looking north-west, the valley opens out. The cashel to which this earthwork attaches has its own separate record, and the relationship between the two features, whether the annexe is contemporary with the cashel or a later addition, remains an open question. That ambiguity is part of what makes the place interesting. It is not a tidy ruin with a clean narrative; it is a smudge of evidence in a landscape that has absorbed centuries of use.

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Pete F
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