Lecarrow Fort, Lecarrow, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Lecarrow Fort, Lecarrow, Co. Clare

On a narrow ridge rising to around 200 feet above the County Clare countryside, a small enclosure sits in pasture with commanding views south towards Rosslara Lough, its origins and purpose now largely swallowed by briars and overgrowth.

What survives is modest but legible enough: a roughly oval area, approximately 17 metres by 20 metres, enclosed by a low earthen scarp and a short stretch of bank. The interior is dish-shaped, sloping gently to the south-east, and the land drops away steeply on both the north-west and south-east sides of the ridge. The elevation and the topography together suggest that whoever built this enclosure chose the site with some deliberation, though whether it served as a defensive ringfort, a livestock enclosure, or something else entirely is not easily answered from what remains.

The monument appears on Ordnance Survey mapping under the name Lecarrow Fort in both the 1842 and 1920 editions of the six-inch map, which at minimum tells us that it was already considered a distinct and named feature by the mid-nineteenth century. Incorporated into the north-western scarp is a linear earthen field boundary running north-east to south-west, its presence suggesting that at some point agricultural land management and the older enclosure became entangled, with later boundaries effectively cannibalising or reinforcing the earlier structure. A second field boundary, oriented north-west to south-east and located roughly seven metres to the north-east, is far more fragmentary, surviving only as a loose scatter of moss-covered stones and intermittent trees. Both boundaries are visible on the same historic maps, placing them firmly within the post-medieval agricultural landscape even if their precise relationship to the fort itself is harder to unpick.

The enclosing elements, where they survive, are quite low, the bank reaching an external height of around 0.75 metres and a scarp of only 0.45 metres. Dense overgrowth now obscures much of the circuit, and the interior is heavily briar-covered, making close inspection difficult. The ridge location, though, remains the most arresting quality of the site; the steep slopes to either side and the long southward view across the landscape give a clear sense of why this particular piece of ground was singled out, whatever its original function.

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Pete F
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