Enclosure, Fahee, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Fahee, Co. Clare

At the bottom of a north-west-facing slope in Fahee, County Clare, sit two adjoining enclosures that, at first glance, carry all the hallmarks of early medieval field boundaries or ancient farmsteads.

Inspectors visiting the site in 1999 and again in 2002 found them compelling enough to record as possible conjoined ancient enclosures, the kind of low stone structures that dot the limestone landscapes of Clare and speak to centuries of settlement and land use.

On closer examination, however, both enclosures turned out to be of modern drystone construction, meaning they were built without mortar, in the traditional technique used across rural Ireland for field divisions and animal pens well into the twentieth century. The western enclosure is roughly oval, with a gap on the south-south-east side that may have served as an entrance, while the eastern one is more subrectangular in form. That eastern section is partly defined by natural rock outcrop, with a later wall built on top of it, a layering that neatly illustrates how builders across generations have used whatever the landscape offered and then added to it. It is precisely this blending of geology and human construction that gave the site its ambiguous, older appearance when first noted.

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