Enclosure, Fanore More, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On a north-facing slope in the Burren landscape of County Clare, a roughly circular wall sits half-swallowed by vegetation, its outline now more legible from aerial photography than from the ground.
The enclosure at Fanore More measures somewhere between eighteen and twenty metres in diameter, and what makes it quietly compelling is less its size than its context: it sits within a much larger field system, with a contemporary field boundary pressing up against its eastern edge, as though the surrounding agricultural landscape and the enclosure grew up together, negotiating space across the same stretch of hillside.
Enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish countryside, though their precise functions varied considerably. Some were settlement enclosures, others served as livestock pens or ceremonial spaces. What gives this one additional interest is its proximity to a bivallate ringfort lying roughly a hundred metres to the north-east. A bivallate ringfort is one defined by two concentric banks or walls rather than the usual single circuit, a form generally associated with higher-status occupation during the early medieval period. The pairing of the enclosure and the ringfort, both embedded within the same field system, suggests an organised and probably long-lived pattern of land use on this slope, with different structures serving different roles within a shared agricultural or domestic arrangement.
The enclosure's wall is described as overgrown, and it was the clarity of aerial orthophotography rather than ground survey that brought its form into focus. For anyone exploring the Fanore More area on foot, the surrounding field system itself is the most readable part of the landscape, with the enclosure requiring some patience to distinguish from the general scatter of field boundaries that characterise this part of the Burren.