Enclosure, Lisduff, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Lisduff, Co. Clare

On a low hill in County Clare, surrounded by improved pasture and with Lecarrow Lough visible to the south-east, there is a roughly oval earthwork that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

It measures around nineteen metres north to south and twenty-two metres east to west, making it modest in scale, and the bank that once defined its perimeter has been worn down so thoroughly that in most places it survives only as a scarp, a slight step in the ground rather than anything you might call a wall or rampart. Thorn trees, furze, and briars have grown through and over the enclosing elements, and loose boulders have been heaped onto the remains at various points, presumably cleared from the surrounding pasture at some stage and deposited where the ground was already slightly raised.

Enclosures of this kind, a ringfort or related circular or oval earthwork defined by a bank and sometimes an outer ditch, or fosse, were built across Ireland mainly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served variously as farmsteads, settlements, or places of status for local dynasties. Here at Lisduff, there is no trace of an outer fosse, which might once have added a further line of definition to the structure. The interior slopes very gently towards the west-north-west and is covered in vegetation, giving little away about whatever activity the enclosure once contained. What the site does retain is its position: conspicuous on its hill, overlooking an undulating Clare landscape, it would have been visible from some distance in every direction, which was likely part of the point.

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Pete F
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