Enclosure, Noughaval, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On a south-facing slope in the Noughaval townland of County Clare, a circle of collapsed stone sits so quietly in the rough pasture and hazel scrub that it could easily be mistaken for a natural feature of the ground.
It is not. What survives is a subcircular enclosure, its interior measuring roughly 8.4 metres east to west and 7 metres north to south, enclosed by the remnants of a stone wall that has long since folded in on itself and grown over with grass.
The wall itself, where it survives, varies considerably in width, between 1.2 and 2.8 metres, suggesting it was once a substantial construction rather than a simple field boundary. Its external face still rises to around 0.4 to 0.5 metres above the surrounding ground, while the interior height is now barely perceptible, only 0.1 to 0.3 metres of visible stonework remaining. Some of the larger stones have been laid with their long axes running along the curve of the wall, a deliberate technique that lends the structure a degree of coherence even in its ruined state. Enclosures of this kind in Ireland are often associated with early medieval settlement, ranging from the ringfort tradition to ecclesiastical enclosures, though the available evidence here does not allow for a firm identification of function or date. One notable detail is that the wall is absent along the east to south-east arc, but this gap is not thought to represent an original entrance point, which raises the quiet question of where people once passed in and out, and why that evidence no longer survives.