Enclosure, Leamaneigh More, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Leamaneigh More, Co. Clare

On the townland of Leamaneigh More, in the limestone karst country of County Clare, there lies a feature recorded simply as an enclosure, a category that covers a broad range of ancient structures, from early medieval farmsteads ringed by earthen banks to more ambiguous enclosures whose original purpose remains a matter of educated guesswork.

The Burren region, in which Leamaneigh More sits, is unusually rich in such remains, partly because the thin soils and low-intensity land use over centuries have allowed earthworks and stone boundaries to survive where they might elsewhere have been ploughed away or built over. An enclosure, in archaeological terms, is any defined area bounded by a bank, ditch, wall, or combination of these, and the term is used precisely when the evidence does not yet permit a more specific identification.

Leamaneigh More is perhaps best known as the location of Leamaneh Castle, the tower house and later Jacobean mansion associated with the O'Brien family and, in particular, with Máire Rua O'Brien, the formidable seventeenth-century noblewoman whose reputation in local folklore has long outrun the documentary record. The broader townland therefore carries considerable historical weight, and the presence of an enclosure in the vicinity hints at a landscape that was organised and occupied well before the O'Briens built in stone. Whether the enclosure is prehistoric, early medieval, or of some other date is not presently clear from available information, and it is this unresolved quality that gives it a quiet interest of its own, a feature waiting to be properly read.

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