Enclosure, Lecarrow, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Lecarrow, Co. Sligo

On the south-eastern slope of Red Hill in County Sligo, there is a small, roughly circular hollow that has never quite resolved itself into a clear identity.

Measuring about thirteen and a half metres east to west and twelve and a half metres north to south, it sits cut into the hillside in a way that suggests deliberate shaping, yet the interior is filled with field clearance debris and the original entrance, if there ever was a formal one, is no longer legible. That ambiguity is the whole point. Whether this feature began as an enclosure, the kind of bounded space that appears throughout the Irish landscape as a homestead site or small enclosure of uncertain purpose, or whether it was at some point a quarry, or both in sequence, is a question the ground has not answered.

The structure works differently on different sides. To the south-west, west, and north-west, where the slope is steepest, the enclosure is defined by an internal scarp, a cut face in the hillside roughly a metre high and two and a half metres across, with a slightly raised outer rim. As the ground flattens out to the east, the form changes: a low bank of earth and stone, edged with a rough kerb of boulders, takes over the enclosing work, with a gap of around six metres interrupting it. Along the southern arc, a curving line of boulders completes the circuit. Adding to the uncertainty, a linear bank extends eastward from this southern element to meet a north-to-south field boundary a short distance away, suggesting later agricultural activity has overlapped with whatever came before. The feature does not appear on the 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which means it was either overlooked by the surveyors or had already lost enough definition by that point to pass unremarked.

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Pete F
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