Enclosure, Ballynabanaba, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballynabanaba, Co. Galway

On a hill summit in Ballynabanaba, overlooking a stretch of bogland to the north and east, there is an enclosure that can no longer be seen.

That is more or less the whole situation. The hill levels off at the top before dropping sharply to the west and north, and whatever once occupied that elevated position has left no visible trace on the ground today.

What survives instead is a paper record, and a curious discrepancy within it. The first edition of the Ordnance Survey map recorded the site as a roughly circular field, approximately 37 metres in diameter. When surveyors returned between 1912 and 1916 to produce the more detailed 1:2500 plan, they recorded something slightly different, a roughly subrectangular hachured enclosure measuring around 40 metres east to west and 37 metres north to south. Hachured enclosures on OS maps are indicated by short radiating lines suggesting an earthen bank or raised edge, the cartographer's way of conveying that something was physically present and bounded. Whether the change in shape between the two surveys reflects genuine re-examination of the ground, a different surveyor's interpretation, or some shift in what was actually visible at each date is impossible to say now. The enclosure belongs to a broad class of roughly circular or oval earthwork found across Ireland, often interpreted as early medieval settlement sites or livestock enclosures, though without excavation it is not possible to assign a date or function to this particular example.

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Pete F
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