Enclosure, Urraghry, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
In the undulating grassland of Urraghry in County Galway, a circular enclosure roughly 45 metres across was once substantial enough to leave a mark on a mid-twentieth century map.
Today, nothing remains visible at ground level. The hummock on which it sat is still there, a low rise in an otherwise rolling landscape, but the enclosure itself has effectively vanished, surviving only as a cartographic record from the 1946 third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map.
Circular enclosures of this kind are scattered across Ireland, and their origins vary considerably. Some are the remains of ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads that served as the basic unit of rural settlement throughout the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Others may have had earlier prehistoric purposes. A diameter of around 45 metres places this example at the larger end of the typical ringfort scale, which might suggest it belonged to a family or individual of some local standing. Whether its banks were of earth, stone, or some combination, and when they finally disappeared into the soil or were cleared for agriculture, is not recorded. What is known is that by the time anyone thought to note it formally, the physical structure was already gone, visible only in the slight elevation of the ground beneath it and on a sheet of paper.