Enclosure, Fahee, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Fahee, Co. Clare

Near the summit of a ridge in County Clare, at just over 700 feet above sea level, a low oval outline sits quietly in rough grazing land.

It is not much to look at from the ground, but aerial imagery reveals it clearly enough: a grass-covered wall tracing an oval roughly 22 metres north to south and 15 metres east to west, its eastern edge apparently using the natural rise of higher ground as a boundary. This kind of enclosure, where a wall and the landscape itself together define a contained space, is a small but telling detail about how people once organised their activity on elevated ground.

The site was identified by Conn Herriott at the south-western end of a north-east to south-west ridge in the townland of Fahee. The surviving wall arc runs from south, around the west, and up to the north-east, while the eastern limits appear to merge with or abut the slope behind it. Enclosures of this general type in Ireland range widely in date and function, from early medieval farmsteads to later stock management features, and without excavation it is difficult to say more about this one's origins. What the aerial record does confirm is that the grassed-over wall retains enough definition to be mapped, even if it would be easy to walk past on foot without noticing anything underfoot beyond a slight rise in the turf.

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Pete F
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