Enclosure, Esker, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Esker, Co. Galway

Beneath level pastureland in Esker, County Galway, lies a circular enclosure roughly ninety metres across that has left no mark on the ground at all.

No earthwork, no depression, no scatter of stone. The only evidence it ever existed is a line on a map.

The 1932 third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the enclosure as a large, roughly circular feature, the kind of dimensions that would once have enclosed a substantial farmstead or settlement. Circular enclosures of this type, often called ringforts, were the dominant form of rural habitation in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised bank and external ditch enclosing a family's home and outbuildings. Whatever this one was made of, whether earthen bank or some lighter arrangement, it had already disappeared from the landscape by the time anyone thought to look closely. Notably, a second enclosure of similar character once lay just 325 metres to the south, suggesting this part of north Galway was once more densely settled than its quiet fields now imply.

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