Enclosure, Tullycommon, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
On the north-western shoulder of a karst plateau in County Clare, above the 600-foot contour, a circular stone enclosure sits in a slight hollow among rough grazing land.
Karst is limestone terrain shaped by water erosion, and this particular plateau carries with it the austere, open quality common to such landscapes in the west of Ireland. What makes this enclosure quietly arresting is its entrance: a narrow gap less than a metre wide, flanked by two large upright stone slabs set on edge and running transversely through the full thickness of the wall. The north-eastern slab measures over one and a half metres long; the south-western one reaches more than two metres. Both slabs rise noticeably higher as they approach the south-east, giving the entrance a subtle, deliberate sense of threshold.
The enclosure itself is roughly circular, with internal dimensions of around 13.9 metres east to west and 12.2 metres north to south, and walls that were originally some 2.1 metres wide at the north. A stone enclosure of this kind, defined by a substantial drystone wall and set within a landscape of layered field boundaries, would typically be understood as a ringfort or related settlement feature, though the precise date and function here remain unspecified. What is clear is that it belongs to a much larger, multi-period field system in the surrounding area, meaning that the people who used this enclosure were also working and dividing the land around it across what may have been many successive generations. The site was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897, and again on the Cassini edition of the OS 6-inch map from 1920, suggesting it was a recognisable feature of the landscape long before any formal archaeological attention came its way.
The enclosure has not survived entirely intact. Its wall was largely removed along the west to north-north-west arc at some later point, and an annexe, measuring roughly 13.9 metres by 6.9 metres, was added in that gap. A later drystone wall, only about half a metre wide and half a metre tall, now encloses this annexe and runs across the remains of the earlier structure. Several other upright slabs stand nearby, possibly remnants of the original wall-faces. The interior of the enclosure is slightly hollow, a detail that can sometimes point to accumulated occupation layers or simply to the way a stone-robbed wall leaves the ground within it sitting a little lower than the surrounding terrain. The widest views from the site open out to the north-east, across the plateau.
Karst is limestone terrain shaped by water erosion, and this particular plateau carries with it the austere, open quality common to such landscapes in the west of Ireland. What makes this enclosure quietly arresting is its entrance: a narrow gap less than a metre wide, flanked by two large upright stone slabs set on edge and running transversely through the full thickness of the wall. The north-eastern slab measures over one and a half metres long; the south-western one reaches more than two metres. Both slabs rise noticeably higher as they approach the south-east, giving the entrance a subtle, deliberate sense of threshold.
The enclosure itself is roughly circular, with internal dimensions of around 13.9 metres east to west and 12.2 metres north to south, and walls that were originally some 2.1 metres wide at the north. A stone enclosure of this kind, defined by a substantial drystone wall and set within a landscape of layered field boundaries, would typically be understood as a ringfort or related settlement feature, though the precise date and function here remain unspecified. What is clear is that it belongs to a much larger, multi-period field system in the surrounding area, meaning that the people who used this enclosure were also working and dividing the land around it across what may have been many successive generations. The site was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897, and again on the Cassini edition of the OS 6-inch map from 1920, suggesting it was a recognisable feature of the landscape long before any formal archaeological attention came its way.
The enclosure has not survived entirely intact. Its wall was largely removed along the west to north-north-west arc at some later point, and an annexe, measuring roughly 13.9 metres by 6.9 metres, was added in that gap. A later drystone wall, only about half a metre wide and half a metre tall, now encloses this annexe and runs across the remains of the earlier structure. Several other upright slabs stand nearby, possibly remnants of the original wall-faces. The interior of the enclosure is slightly hollow, a detail that can sometimes point to accumulated occupation layers or simply to the way a stone-robbed wall leaves the ground within it sitting a little lower than the surrounding terrain. The widest views from the site open out to the north-east, across the plateau.
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