Enclosure, Doonally, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
Near the summit of a locally prominent hill in Doonally, County Galway, there is a circular enclosure that has been quietly dissolving into the pastureland around it for centuries.
It measures roughly 40 metres across, which would once have made it a substantial feature in the landscape, but what remains today is little more than a low scarp, a slight ridge of earth tracing a circle that most walkers would cross without a second glance. An external fosse, the term for a defensive ditch dug around the perimeter of such an enclosure, runs along part of its circumference, though it has become so faint on the south-western and western sides that it is no longer visible at all.
Two causewayed gaps survive in the circuit, one on the northern side measuring about one and a half metres wide, and a slightly wider one on the eastern side. A causewayed gap is simply a point where the ditch was never cut, leaving a solid crossing of natural ground rather than a bridge or later infill. Their presence at both north and east suggests deliberate, planned entrances rather than later breaks or collapses, and hints at the original function of the site as an enclosed space where movement in and out was controlled and intentional. Whether this was a ringfort serving a farming settlement, a ceremonial space, or something else entirely, the record does not say with certainty, and the poor state of preservation makes further interpretation difficult.