Enclosure, Drummany, Co. Cavan
Co. Cavan |
Enclosures
On a low ridge in County Cavan, a grass-covered oval outline sits quietly in the landscape, its shape most legible not from the ground but from aerial imagery.
The enclosure at Drummany measures roughly 60 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and about 48 metres across, defined on its northern side by an earthen bank some seven metres wide, with what appears to be a low scarp marking its extent elsewhere. Earthen enclosures of this kind are among the most common yet least understood features of the Irish countryside, their original purposes ranging from early medieval farmsteads to ritual or ceremonial use, and their dates often impossible to establish without excavation.
What gives the Drummany enclosure a particular geographical interest is its relationship to the surrounding landscape. It occupies the northern end of a gentle north-south ridge overlooking Derreskit Lough, and roughly 250 metres to the north lies a crannog, an artificial or partly artificial island built in a lake, typically during the early medieval period and used as a defended dwelling place. The proximity of an enclosed ridge-top site to a lake-based crannog is a pairing that appears elsewhere in the Irish midlands and north, suggesting that the two features may have functioned together as part of a single organised territory, though no such connection has been confirmed here. The enclosure was first recorded by Jean Charles Caillére, and its outline has since been identified through satellite and aerial platforms including Digital Globe imagery from 2011 to 2013 and multiple Google Earth captures between 2012 and 2017.