Enclosure, Murrooghkilly, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Murrooghkilly, Co. Clare

On the south-western slopes of Murrooghkilly hill in County Clare, a roughly circular stone wall encloses a space of about 25 metres across.

It is not a dramatic ruin, and it carries no famous name. What makes it quietly significant is the context in which it sits: this modest enclosure is just one element within a much larger field system that stretches for over a kilometre between the Caher River and Murrooghkilly hill itself, a sprawling patchwork of boundaries that speaks to sustained, organised land use across a considerable stretch of upland terrain.

Enclosures of this kind, defined by a low stone wall and roughly circular or subcircular in plan, appear throughout the Irish landscape and are broadly associated with early agricultural activity, though their precise dates are often difficult to establish without excavation. They were used variously for penning livestock, protecting cultivation plots, or as components of more complex farming systems. Here, the enclosure belongs to a field system whose full extent suggests that the slopes of Murrooghkilly were once a working, managed landscape rather than the quiet hillside they appear today. The site came to wider attention relatively recently, having been identified from Digital Globe satellite imagery captured between 2011 and 2013, and subsequently reported to the National Monuments Service by Ros Ó Maoldúin.

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