Enclosure, Poulnaskagh, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Poulnaskagh, Co. Clare

On a high plateau of the Burren in County Clare, partly obscured by dense scrub, sits a circular enclosure that most people will never see from ground level.

Roughly twenty-two metres across, its subcircular perimeter is so thickly overgrown that the shape only becomes legible from above, resolved into something coherent by aerial photography rather than by walking the land.

Enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish landscape, typically defined by an earthen bank, a stone wall, or some combination of the two, and thought in many cases to represent early medieval farmsteads or enclosed settlement sites. What makes this one quietly notable is how it came to wider attention: not through a formal field survey or a chance exposure of stonework during agricultural work, but through a report submitted to the National Monuments Service by Conn Herriott, and subsequently confirmed as visible on aerial imagery captured between 2012 and 2018. The scrub that hides it at ground level is, in a sense, also what preserved it, keeping the perimeter intact while the surrounding plateau went about its business.

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Pete F
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