Enclosure (Large), Taghart, Co. Cavan
Co. Cavan |
Enclosures
On the western shore of Taghart Lough in County Cavan, a large D-shaped enclosure sits in a field that most people would walk past without a second glance.
It measures roughly 110 metres east to west and 110 metres north to south, with its straight edge pressed up against the lakeshore. The curved arc of the enclosure faces inland, defined to the north and northwest by an earthen bank and an outer fosse, each around five metres wide. A fosse, to put it plainly, is a defensive or boundary ditch dug into the ground, often thrown up alongside a bank as part of the same earthwork. To the northeast and south, the fosse continues without the accompanying bank, and the whole southern portion of the structure appears to have been cut away by a later field bank and drainage channel running roughly east to west.
The enclosure slopes gently down towards Taghart Lough on its west and north sides, a positioning that suggests deliberate use of the landscape, whether for defence, agriculture, or enclosure of livestock and settlement. The field it occupies still carries the ghost of older land use: relict cultivation ridges run parallel to the southern field bank, the kind of corrugated ground left behind by generations of spade or plough work long since abandoned. The site was first brought to wider attention by Jean Charles Caillére, and its full outline is most legible from above, where aerial imagery reveals the arc of the earthwork against the lakeshore with a clarity that ground-level inspection struggles to match. Much of what can be said about the enclosure rests on that aerial evidence rather than on any excavation, which means its date and original purpose remain open questions, sitting quietly in the Cavan landscape without easy answers.