Enclosure, Tanrego, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tanrego, Co. Sligo

On the south-western shore of Ballisodare Bay in County Sligo, a low rise of ground close to the stony tideline holds the faint outline of something that cartographers never recorded.

No edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, the standard reference for Irish field monuments over more than a century of surveying, carries any trace of this enclosure. It came to light only through the scrutiny of aerial photography, the kind of oblique light and altered perspective that reveals cropmarks and earthworks invisible at ground level.

What survives is a raised rectangular area, roughly seven metres east to west and six and a half metres north to south, partially defined by a low curving bank along its northern and north-western edges. The bank is modest in scale, around two and a half metres wide and barely half a metre in external height, and it does not complete a full circuit. It cannot be traced along the eastern side at all, and there is a gap of about two metres in the western section. Whether that western break represents an original entrance or simply the gradual loss of earthwork to time and ground disturbance is unclear. More intriguing still, the southern edge of this enclosure abuts what may be a rectangular house, suggesting the two structures were related in some way, perhaps one serving or sheltering the other. The remains are, by any honest assessment, poorly defined and resistant to interpretation. The function, the date, and even the precise character of the enclosure remain genuinely open questions.

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Pete F
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