Enclosure, Garryad And Garryduff, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Garryad And Garryduff, Co. Galway

In the undulating grassland of south Galway, on a north-east-facing slope near Garryad and Garryduff, there is a place that exists almost entirely on paper.

A circular enclosure roughly fifteen metres in diameter was recorded here on the 1838 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the earliest and most systematic attempts to document the Irish landscape in detail. Today, no visible surface trace survives. The ground gives nothing away.

Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological features in Ireland, and among the most varied in origin and function. Some were ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval families; others served as burial grounds, stock enclosures, or the foundations of structures long since robbed of their stone. A diameter of around fifteen metres is modest, towards the smaller end of the ringfort scale, though without excavation it is impossible to say what this particular feature was or when it was built. What is certain is that the Ordnance Survey cartographers of the 1830s considered it worth marking, which means it was visible and legible in the landscape at that point. In the roughly two centuries since, whatever earthwork or stone feature once defined the circle has been levelled, absorbed back into the agricultural ground that surrounds it.

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