Enclosure, Carrowcraheen, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
In a field of reclaimed pasture in County Clare, a faint oval outline in the ground marks something that most walkers would step over without a second glance.
The bank that defines it rises only ten to twenty centimetres above the surrounding land, and the enclosure itself has been worn so close to flat that it barely registers as a feature at all. Yet it survives, roughly twenty-six metres across at its widest and twenty metres at its narrowest, its suboval shape still legible to anyone who knows what to look for.
Enclosures of this kind, a broad category covering ringforts, farmstead boundaries, and other enclosed settlements, once formed a familiar part of the Irish rural landscape. Many have been lost entirely to ploughing and land improvement, which makes the continued presence of this one, even in its diminished state, quietly significant. What is known of it stretches back at least to 1842, when it was recorded with hachure marks on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, the standard topographic survey of Ireland carried out in the early nineteenth century. The hachures indicate that surveyors at the time recognised an earthwork worth noting. A companion enclosure sits roughly eight metres to the north-west, suggesting this was once part of a small cluster rather than an isolated feature on the hillside.