Enclosure, Farranyharpy, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Enclosures
On a low, rocky rise at the foot of a north-facing slope in County Sligo, a small circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its original entrance long since lost.
Enclosures of this kind are among the most common yet least understood features of the Irish countryside, roughly circular areas bounded by an earthen bank that may have served as a farmstead, a cattle enclosure, or something more ceremonial. What makes this one worth pausing over is partly its modesty: at roughly fourteen and a half metres north to south and thirteen metres east to west, it is compact even by the standards of the type, and the bank that defines it rises only thirty-five to forty centimetres above the enclosed ground.
The bank itself is around three metres wide and incorporates large stones within the earthen fabric, a construction method that makes use of whatever the local ground offered up. The enclosed area is saucer-shaped in cross-section, dipping gently toward the centre rather than sitting flat, which gives the interior a subtly bowl-like quality that might easily go unnoticed at a glance. On the northern and western sides, the bank appears more pronounced than its modest measurements would suggest, because the naturally falling slope of the land amplifies its external face. The original entrance has not been identified, which is not unusual; generations of agricultural use, erosion, and stone-robbing have erased the threshold on countless such sites across Ireland.