Enclosure, Kilmichael, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Enclosures
On the north-facing slopes of Dursey Island, in a stretch of rough hill pasture edging onto cutaway bog, a small circular enclosure sits in a state of considered collapse.
What makes it quietly odd is the way it has been quietly repurposed across its own lifetime: an ancient drystone structure, probably built as a clochán or early enclosure, later pressed into service as two rectangular turf stands for stacking cut peat, and now abandoned to both uses entirely.
The structure measures roughly twelve metres north to south and eleven east to west, defined by the remains of a drystone wall that still stands to around 0.45 metres in places and runs to about 0.8 metres thick. An entrance survives at the east side, marked by two upright parallel slabs set 0.7 metres apart. The builders paid careful attention to the hillslope: the interior floor was raised at the north end and cut into the bank at the south to create something approaching level ground inside, a practical adjustment that involved shifting considerable material. Rubble has since slumped outward, particularly downslope to the north, and the NE quadrant of the interior is scattered with loose stone. At some later point, sections of the wall on the west and east were rearranged into two long rectangular platforms, each about twelve metres by two, designed as turf stands where cut sods of peat could be stacked to dry. Those platforms are now abandoned too. The enclosure is known locally as Clochán Uí Chronacháin, a name that preserves a personal surname, Ó Cronacháin, within a word that typically refers to a dry-stone beehive hut or small corbelled structure of early medieval origin in Ireland.