Enclosure, Tyredagh, Co. Clare
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Enclosures
What survives at Tyredagh in County Clare is, by almost any measure, nearly nothing: a low arc of earth, less than a metre high, curving faintly around the south-eastern edge of a natural plateau.
And yet that sliver of ground carries the outline of something that once warranted marking on a map, planting with trees, and eventually theorising about by one of Ireland's most diligent antiquarians.
The 1842 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded a circular coppice of trees on this plateau, measuring roughly 51 metres north to south and 48 metres east to west, its boundary indicated by a perforated line, the cartographic shorthand of the period for a feature of some note. By 1917, the antiquary Thomas Johnson Westropp had visited and described it as a small earthen ring, possibly sepulchral, meaning he suspected it may have enclosed a burial of some kind, a not uncommon function for such earthworks in the Irish landscape. Since then, agricultural improvement has done its quiet damage. The plateau top has been levelled, the ring largely dispersed, and what remains is a scarp, roughly 3.4 metres wide and 0.7 metres high, running along the south-eastern to southern edge. This remnant is likely the downslope accumulation of material pushed off the flattened ring rather than any deliberately constructed feature in its own right. A standing stone recorded nearby adds a further layer of possibility to the site, hinting that this corner of Clare may once have held a more complex arrangement of early monuments than the current pasture suggests.
The site sits in improved farmland on a naturally formed, low but distinct plateau, and the scarp is subtle enough that a visitor without some foreknowledge would be unlikely to identify it as anything other than a slight change in ground level. The standing stone, visible in the background from the eastern approach, offers the clearest landmark in the wider field.