Enclosure, Derreen, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
At the base of a north-west-facing slope in Derreen, County Clare, a low drystone wall traces out a rough rectangle on level ground, incorporating large erratic boulders, those glacially deposited stones that were simply too useful to move, into its fabric.
The enclosure measures roughly twenty metres by fifteen, with the wall itself spread to between three and four metres wide in places, though it barely rises above the ground at just twenty centimetres in height. A modern shed has been built into the south-east end, the kind of quiet annexation that speaks to centuries of practical adaptation rather than any sense of the site as something to preserve or explain.
What makes this enclosure genuinely curious is the uncertainty surrounding it. When the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1842, the enclosure was deemed significant enough to mark with hachures, the short lines surveyors used to indicate an earthwork or raised feature of potential interest. By the 1915 edition of the same map series, it was recorded again, this time with a solid line. Yet beyond that first cartographic appearance, there is no firm evidence that the structure is of ancient origin. It incorporates what appears to be a relict field bank, the remnant of an earlier boundary that was absorbed or repurposed when the enclosure was formed, but whether that points to early medieval activity or simply to post-medieval land management is not something the physical remains resolve. It sits in that ambiguous category of places that are old enough to be mapped, but not old enough, or not documented enough, to be confidently classified.