Enclosure, Parteen, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Parteen, Co. Clare

In a field of gently rolling pasture near Parteen in County Clare, a shallow circular earthwork sits on a low rise, easy to miss and easier still to misread as a natural feature of the ground.

It is only twelve metres across, defined not by a wall or ditch in the conventional sense but by the remnant of a low scarp, a sloping edge of earth, barely thirty centimetres high and around a metre and a half wide, that traces a rough circle through the grass. At the northern side, there is a gap about two metres wide that may once have served as an entrance. The interior is level and grass-covered, giving little away.

This kind of small circular enclosure is a recurring presence in the Irish landscape, though its purpose in any given case is rarely certain. Such features have been interpreted variously as the remains of ringforts, stock enclosures, or early settlement sites, with origins typically ranging across the early medieval period, though without excavation it is difficult to say more than that. What is notable here is the setting: the rise offers moderate views across the landscape to the south-south-east and north-north-west, though woodland closes off the sight lines in other directions. A second enclosure of the same general type lies roughly 180 metres to the south, which raises the possibility, no more than that, that the two features were once related in some way, whether as paired enclosures, boundary markers, or elements of a small agricultural complex.

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Pete F
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