Enclosure, Cloonee, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloonee, Co. Galway

On an east-facing slope in the gently rolling grassland of Cloonee in north County Galway, a rough circle in the earth marks the outline of something that was once deliberately built, though what exactly remains uncertain.

The enclosure, roughly 29 metres across from north to south, is poorly preserved to the point that only part of its perimeter can still be traced. A low scarp, just over a metre in height, runs from the south-south-east around through the west and up to the north, while the rest of the circuit has left no visible mark on the surface at all. At the northern end, faint traces suggest there may once have been a bank, the kind of earthen ridge that would have defined the boundary more firmly, though even that is tentative.

Enclosures of this kind are among the most common, and most quietly puzzling, features of the Irish rural landscape. They could represent the remains of a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead used throughout the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when such circular boundaries in earth or stone marked out a family's living space and offered some protection for people and livestock alike. Without excavation, though, it is impossible to say with confidence what this particular site was for, or when it was made. The landscape around it has absorbed it gradually, the grassland softening whatever edges once made it legible.

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Pete F
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