Enclosure, Tullycommon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On a steep ridge in Tullycommon, County Clare, a roughly circular patch of ground about 34 metres across sits quietly beneath a skin of grass.
The enclosure is defined by a low, grassed-over wall, the kind of feature that reads clearly in aerial photography but can be easy to walk past at ground level. What makes it worth pausing over is not any single remarkable detail but the density of what surrounds it: the ridge it occupies is crowded with ringforts and cashels, the whole landscape forming an extensive ancient field system that speaks to sustained, organised habitation across a considerable stretch of time.
The enclosure itself is subcircular, measuring approximately 34 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west. A field wall extends westward from its western perimeter, possibly laid out at the same time as the enclosure itself, and an additional enclosed area abuts the site to the southwest, suggesting this was not a lone, isolated structure but part of a broader pattern of land management. Ringforts, which are roughly circular earthwork enclosures typically associated with early medieval farming settlements, and cashels, their stone-built equivalents, cluster along the same ridge. A subrectangular cashel lies around 86 metres to the northeast, and a hut site sits approximately 90 metres to the north-northwest. Together these features suggest a community that shaped and subdivided this hillside over generations, carving out living space and farmland on a northwest-facing slope where the ground drops away steeply.