Enclosure, Glinsk, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Glinsk, Co. Galway

In the flat pastureland of north Galway, a faint circular scar sits in a field roughly 300 metres south-south-west of Glinsk Castle.

It has never been formally visited by archaeologists. What is known about it comes entirely from the air, spotted during a reconnaissance flight in January 1985.

The flight identified a univallate enclosure, meaning a roughly circular enclosed space defined by a single bank or wall, measuring somewhere between 25 and 35 metres in diameter. The enclosing bank is described as denuded, worn down to little more than a low earthen ridge, and there are possible traces of an external fosse, a defensive ditch, along the southern and western sides. Enclosures of this general type are relatively common across Ireland and are often associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation or closer examination it is impossible to say more about the function or date of this particular example. Its proximity to Glinsk Castle, a tower house associated with the Burke family and dating to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, raises the possibility of a longer history of occupation at this low-lying site, but that remains speculative. What is not speculative is the appeal of the image: a circle pressed into farmland, detected only because a plane happened to fly over on a winter morning forty years ago, and otherwise left entirely alone.

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Pete F
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