Enclosure, Tullycommon, Co. Clare

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Tullycommon, Co. Clare

On a north-west-facing slope in Tullycommon, County Clare, there sits a large D-shaped enclosure whose presence raises an immediate question: what exactly is it?

Measuring roughly 65 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and about 50 metres across, it is a substantial structure, defined on three sides by derelict drystone walls. The fourth side, a curving wall running from north-west through north to north-north-east, has been kept in use as a working field boundary, which is part of what makes the place quietly puzzling. Something this size, with this kind of geometry, can look at first glance like a ringfort or an enclosure of genuine antiquity, the sort of roughly circular walled space that dots the Irish landscape and often dates back to the early medieval period.

The reality, as far as investigation has established, is more ambiguous. There is no evidence that the existing walls overlie earlier or older stonework, and no indication that the enclosure has any archaeological significance. It does not appear to be an antiquity. What it most likely represents is a relatively modern agricultural feature, a large pen, paddock, or boundary arrangement of the kind that farming communities have built and rebuilt across Ireland for generations, using whatever stone was available and whatever shape the land suggested. The drystone technique, in which stones are stacked without mortar, is ancient in origin but was also common practice well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The D-shape here may simply reflect the natural contour of the slope rather than any deliberate formal design.

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