Enclosure, Spring Garden, Co. Sligo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Spring Garden, Co. Sligo

In a patch of low-lying wet pasture in Spring Garden, County Sligo, a subtly raised platform of ground holds the outline of an enclosure that has been quietly slipping out of legibility for centuries.

It reads clearly enough on the 1837 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular form, but by the 1913 edition it had been redrawn as a penannular field, meaning a near-complete ring open at one side, reflecting the way later agricultural use had begun to obscure and partially overwrite the original shape. That process of slow erasure continues on the ground today.

The enclosure is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 24.5 metres on its northeast to southwest axis and 23 metres across from northwest to southeast. Along its southern, western, and northwestern sides, the perimeter survives as a low scarp, rising only about half a metre above the surrounding ground. On the northern, eastern, and southeastern arc, the original boundary has been replaced by a low field wall built directly on top of where the perimeter once ran. There is no fosse, the term for the ditch that typically accompanies an earthwork enclosure, which leaves the site looking less defended and more domestic or agricultural in character. What is particularly striking about the location is the water. The enclosure is almost entirely ringed by wet ground, with dry access only from the south, a configuration that would have offered a degree of natural protection or simply reflected a practical choice about where to build on difficult terrain. Close by, within ten and forty metres to the east, lie two fulacht fia, the plural of fulacht fiadh, ancient cooking sites typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone surrounding a trough, associated in Ireland with prehistoric and early medieval activity. Their proximity to the enclosure raises questions about how this small, damp corner of Sligo was once used, though the relationship between the features remains unclear.

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