Field system, Fanore More, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Fanore More, Co. Clare

At the foot of a northwest-facing cliff on the edge of the Burren, tucked onto a narrow ledge above the Caher River and the dunes of Fanore, there is a field system that nobody can quite date.

The low stone walls, often collapsed and swallowed by thorn and briars, run parallel to the cliff in three rough sections, with two further walls extending westward from them. Whether the whole arrangement belongs to prehistory or the medieval period remains unresolved, and the ambiguity is part of what makes the site quietly absorbing. It covers an area of roughly 150 metres by 50 metres, which is a considerable extent for something so thoroughly forgotten by the landscape around it.

Within that space, surveyors have identified an enclosure, two hut sites, and two house sites, suggesting that this was not simply a matter of dividing grazing land but a place where people actually lived and worked, however temporarily. Midway along the cliff-face, a natural cave opens into the rock, and one wall partially blocks its entrance, which implies the cave was deliberately incorporated into the complex at some point, though there is no direct evidence of when or how it was used. A large boulder, 2.3 metres long and 1.6 metres high, sits on bare limestone at the centre of the site. It rests directly over a gryke, one of the natural fissures characteristic of Burren limestone pavements, which has been filled with clay and stone beneath it. A smaller boulder propped against its eastern end appears to have once been part of the same mass. To the north, a cairnfield of very small stone piles laid on low outcrops may represent a separate and more recent phase of activity on the same ledge. None of it declares its purpose plainly, and that reticence is entirely in keeping with a landscape that has been accumulating human traces, without explanation, for millennia.

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Pete F
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