Enclosure, Larkhill, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Enclosures
On the lower northern slopes of the Ox Mountains in County Sligo, a rough circle of drystone walling sits in rocky pasture, easy to walk past without a second glance.
What makes it worth pausing over is less what it is than what it was initially assumed to be. When it was recorded for the Sites and Monuments Record in 1989 and again for the Record of Monuments and Places in 1995, it received the classification "Enclosure", a term that carries considerable archaeological weight, often applied to prehistoric or early medieval ring-forts and settlement remains. The structure is modest but solid: roughly circular, measuring approximately thirteen metres north to south and fourteen metres east to west, with a drystone wall around 1.3 metres wide and 1.2 metres high.
When inspectors examined the site more closely in 1994, the conclusion was rather more prosaic. The wall, described as roughly built, and the context within a broader field system pointed not to any early medieval enclosure but to a post-1700 animal pen, the kind of functional livestock enclosure that farming communities across the west of Ireland constructed from whatever stone lay to hand. Drystone walling of this type requires no mortar; instead, stones are carefully stacked and interlocked so that the structure holds through friction and weight alone. That the wall here still stands over a metre high is itself a quiet demonstration of how durable the technique can be. It sits within a wider field system on the slopes above, suggesting organised agricultural activity across the area in the post-medieval period, though the details of that broader landscape remain unrecorded.