Enclosure, Sladoo, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Sladoo, Co. Clare

On the limestone plateau above Carran in County Clare, an irregular arc of ancient walling describes something that is neither quite a fort nor quite a field, but something older and less easily categorised.

The enclosure at Sladoo stretches roughly a hundred metres across its widest point, defined not by a continuous boundary but by three separate arcs of walling along its western side, a form that sets it apart from the tidier ringforts that pepper the Irish countryside and hints at a different, earlier way of organising the land.

This is one of five prehistoric enclosures identified on the Carran plateau, clustered within a relatively small area and suggesting that this high limestone ground was meaningfully occupied and divided long before the medieval period. The closest parallel for the Sladoo enclosure sits about five hundred metres to the south-east, and that neighbouring structure has been dated to the Late Bronze Age, roughly three thousand years ago, with the similarity in wall construction suggesting the two may belong to the same phase of activity. Inside the Sladoo enclosure, a hut site appears to be broadly contemporary, raising the possibility that this was a place where people actually lived, however seasonally or intermittently, rather than simply a boundary marker or stock enclosure. A later field wall cuts across the interior on a north-west to south-east axis, a reminder that the land continued to be worked and reorganised long after whoever built those original arcs had gone. A field system associated with the enclosure extends to the south-east, adding further texture to what was once a busy agricultural landscape on this high, windswept plateau.

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