Enclosure, Doonaltan, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Doonaltan, Co. Sligo

In the undulating pasture of Doonaltan, a low earthwork traces a shape that does not quite announce itself.

The enclosure is D-shaped, roughly 16.5 metres east to west and 16 metres north to south, and sits on a gentle north-facing slope. The bank of earth and stone that defines much of its perimeter is just 0.3 metres high on the interior and around 3.3 metres wide, the kind of feature that registers as a slight thickening of the ground rather than anything dramatic. There is no fosse, the ditch that typically accompanies earthen enclosures of this type, visible at ground level, which makes dating or classifying it difficult on surface evidence alone.

What gives the site its quiet interest is how its builders seem to have worked with the natural landscape rather than against it. The curved, southern-to-northeastern arc of the bank follows the top of a steep natural break of slope, so the land itself provides part of the enclosure's logic. The eastern side takes a different approach entirely, defined not by a constructed bank but by a relic field boundary, a remnant of an old agricultural division that was absorbed into, or perhaps predates, the enclosure as a whole. The original entrance has not been identified, which is not unusual for earthworks that have been subject to centuries of farming and land use. Enclosures of this general form appear across Ireland in a wide range of periods and contexts, from early medieval farmsteads to prehistoric land divisions, and without excavation the function of this one remains an open question.

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Pete F
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