Enclosure, Termon, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Termon, Co. Clare

On the northern end of the Termon plateau in County Clare, just south of the Glen of Clab, a kidney-shaped enclosure sits at the centre of what was once a busy landscape of human activity.

Its irregular outline, roughly fifty metres east to west and nearly thirty-eight metres north to south, is the kind of detail that rewards close attention to aerial imagery; it shows clearly on satellite photography from the early 2010s and on aerial surveys from the same period, though on the ground it blends quietly into the plateau's broader field system.

An enclosure of this type would originally have served as a defined boundary, most likely marking a settlement or farmstead, possibly with the mounded earth walls functioning as barriers for livestock or as property limits. What makes this particular site more than an isolated curiosity is its position within a much larger pattern. Keegan's 2016 study of the area describes a coherent zone of settlement spread across the Termon plateau, and this enclosure sits at its centre. The field system surrounding it extends across the whole plateau, and the enclosure is not alone even in its immediate vicinity: a smaller enclosure lies around eight metres to the east, and another sits roughly fifteen metres to the southwest. Mound walls extending off the main enclosure to the north and south suggest further connections to this wider arrangement of boundaries and habitation. The overall picture is one of a community that organised itself carefully across this elevated ground, leaving behind a legible, if faint, imprint.

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Pete F
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