Enclosure, Tawnamachugh, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Tawnamachugh, Co. Leitrim

On the southern edge of a limestone plateau above Glencar valley in County Leitrim, two stone enclosures sit pressed against one another in the grass and rushes, their walls long collapsed but still readable in the landscape.

The smaller of the two is roughly circular, measuring about 22.6 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west, its boundary wall originally somewhere between one and a half and two metres wide. Attached to its east side is a much larger oval or D-shaped enclosure, with an internal span of around 65 metres and walls up to three metres across. Neither enclosure has identifiable original entrances, and no facing-stones survive on either, which leaves their date and purpose open to interpretation.

Enclosures of this general type, defined by substantial stone walls and found on elevated or marginal ground, appear across early medieval Ireland in a variety of forms. Some served as settlement enclosures, others as animal pounds or field systems, and in certain cases they are associated with ecclesiastical or ceremonial use. Without diagnostic features it is difficult to place this particular pair more precisely. What complicates matters further is that a field wall already mapped on the 1910 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map has been built directly over the eastern edge of the smaller enclosure, meaning that by the early twentieth century at least, the site had already been partially absorbed into the working agricultural landscape. The larger enclosure, with its notably straight western side, may once have abutted or incorporated some earlier boundary, though the walls of the two enclosures do not cross into one another's interior.

The site sits with a small north-south valley immediately to its east and the Glencar valley opening out to the south below, a position that would have made it conspicuous to anyone moving through the area. The collapsed walls are grass-covered and unexcavated, so what lies beneath the surface, whether occupation layers, finds, or earlier features, remains unknown.

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