Enclosure, Rover, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Rover, Co. Sligo

In the low-lying, waterlogged ground near Rover in County Sligo, there is an enclosure that can no longer be seen.

It exists, in any meaningful sense, only on paper, specifically on a 1914 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where it appears as a near-square subrectangular outline, roughly 25 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, with three straight sides and one gently curving western edge. Stand on the ground above it today and there is nothing to indicate it was ever there. The field boundaries that once neighboured it have been removed, and the site itself has left no visible trace.

Enclosures of this kind are among the most common, and most varied, features in Irish archaeology. The term covers everything from prehistoric farming boundaries to early medieval ringforts, those circular or roughly circular enclosed settlements that were once the basic unit of rural life across Ireland. What this particular enclosure was, and when it was built, is not recorded. What the 1914 map captured may have already been a remnant, a ghost of an outline preserved just long enough in the landscape to be noted by surveyors before the surrounding fields were reorganised and the last surface traces disappeared into the bog.

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Pete F
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