Enclosure, Poulbaun, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On a moderately steep east-facing slope at Poulbaun in County Clare, a roughly square enclosure sits quietly at the top of an old field system, its eastern wall noticeably thicker and more complex than the rest.
That eastern boundary is a double wall, piled with clearance stones, the accumulated debris of generations of farmers lifting rock from the ground to make it workable. Beneath that accumulation, there may be an older wall line entirely, its original course now obscured by later activity.
The enclosure measures approximately 30 metres east to west and 29 metres north to south internally, making it nearly square, and its southern, western, and northern sides are defined by single drystone walls, the kind of dry-laid stonework built without mortar that is common throughout the west of Ireland. A small subrectangular field of similar dimensions abuts the enclosure at the south, also bounded by single drystone walls, suggesting the two features were part of a related agricultural arrangement. The whole complex sits on a narrow terrace of partially improved pasture, the kind of marginal ground that required considerable effort to bring into any kind of productive use. The site was recorded on the 1915 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which places it within at least a century of documented landscape history, though the underlying wall line hinted at beneath the eastern boundary raises the possibility that its origins go back considerably further.