Enclosure, Quigabar, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Quigabar, Co. Sligo

In a flat stretch of low-lying pasture in Quigabar, County Sligo, the ground gives itself away only slightly.

What was once an enclosure, probably a ringfort or settlement boundary of early medieval date, has been ploughed or worn almost level, leaving just a faint raised platform, subcircular in shape, roughly fifteen metres across and nowhere more than half a metre above the surrounding field. It takes a practised eye, or the right angle of winter light, to read it at all.

What makes the site quietly interesting is not this enclosure alone but its relationship with a second one immediately to its north. The two features sit side by side, and the fosse of the southern enclosure, a fosse being a rock-cut or earthen ditch dug as part of a boundary or defensive circuit, runs between them, roughly three to three and a half metres wide. That ditch, belonging to the neighbouring enclosure, effectively forms the dividing line between the two. Paired or clustered enclosures of this kind are not unheard of in the Irish landscape; they may represent successive phases of settlement, related farmsteads, or a larger landholding divided over time. The specifics here remain unresolved, but the spatial logic of the two features sitting so close together, separated by a single fosse, suggests they were not built or used in complete isolation from one another.

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Pete F
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