Enclosure, Mountross, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Mountross, Co. Galway

Just to the north-east of an unnamed folly in Mountross, County Galway, there is a small collapsed enclosure that archaeology can only tentatively explain.

The structure is penannular, meaning it forms an almost-complete ring rather than a fully closed circle, and it measures roughly 8.7 metres across at its widest. Its boundary is a low, broad drystone wall, now largely fallen, with a circular drystone revetment, essentially a retaining ring of dry-laid stone, defining an interior space of only about 1.6 metres across. A gap on the north-east side may be the original entrance. Officially, the structure is classified as a possible hut. Locally, nobody seems to have been in much doubt about what it actually was.

According to local tradition, this modest ring of tumbled stone was used for distilling poitín, the illicit Irish spirit produced outside the reach of the excise men for centuries. The tiny interior, just wide enough for a small still and a fire, would have suited the purpose rather well. The proximity to a folly is a curious detail in itself; follies, the ornamental ruins and towers built by landlords across the Irish countryside during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were by definition theatrical and visible, which makes the neighbouring enclosure's presumed function all the more quietly ironic. Whether the location beside such a conspicuous landmark was chosen for cover, convenience, or sheer audacity is not recorded anywhere. The drystone construction leaves no dateable material, and without the oral tradition, there would be little to distinguish this from hundreds of similarly ambiguous enclosures across Connacht.

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Pete F
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