Enclosure, Dromard, Co. Sligo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Dromard, Co. Sligo

On a ridge top in Dromard, in the south of County Sligo, there is a roughly square or sub-circular area of slightly raised ground that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

It measures just under eighteen metres across, and what defines it as an enclosure, rather than a natural undulation, is a low scarp running along its northern and eastern edges, reaching a height of about 1.2 metres at the east. In a short eroded section near the north, a kerb-like arrangement of stone is just visible, hinting at deliberate construction beneath the turf and field debris.

The site sits at a point where the ridge begins to fall away to the south-east, with the ground dropping gradually for around fifty metres towards a stream. To the north, the slope is steeper, and at its base lie two holy wells, roughly 130 metres from the enclosure. Holy wells are a widespread feature of the Irish landscape, often associated with early Christian or pre-Christian devotion, and their proximity here may or may not be coincidental. The Ox Mountains rise to the south, providing a backdrop of higher ground, while the views open out broadly to the west, north, and east across undulating grassland. The southern side of the enclosure was at some point absorbed into a field boundary that appears on the 1913 Ordnance Survey six-inch map; that boundary has since been removed, leaving heaps of clearance stones piled along its former line and on the poorly defined western side. The interior surface is uneven, broken up by sod-covered stones and low stony mounds, the kind of disruption that comes from centuries of agricultural activity working over and around a feature that was no longer understood as anything in particular.

The enclosure is in pasture, so the ground underfoot is grassy rather than overgrown, and the scarp, though worn, is still readable from the northern side. The stone kerbing visible in the eroded section is the clearest detail to look for, a small but specific piece of evidence that something deliberate once occupied this ridge.

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Pete F
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