Enclosure, Ballymore, Co. Galway

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballymore, Co. Galway

At Ballymore in County Galway, there is an enclosure that no longer exists in any visible sense.

No wall, no earthwork, no shadow in the grass marks the spot where a roughly 8-metre by 5-metre structure once stood, its boundaries formed by single lines of boulders placed upright on their edges. The only reason we know it was there at all is that someone wrote it down.

The record comes from a 1952 survey by McCaffrey, who catalogued this enclosure, annotated simply as 'E', alongside a companion enclosure nearby and a rectangular stone fort with which both were apparently associated. A stone fort in this context typically refers to a walled enclosure of dry-stone construction, used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or defended settlement. The smaller enclosures attached to such sites often functioned as outworks or animal pens, subordinate spaces organised around the main structure. This one measured 7.9 metres by 5.4 metres, modest in scale, and its walls were not built in the mortared or coursed style of more elaborate construction but simply set, boulder by boulder, in a single upright line. At some point between McCaffrey's visit and the present day, whatever remained above ground disappeared entirely.

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Pete F
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