What is recorded here

You can see the chamber, the chamber cannot see you. The enclosure holds the church and graveyard on High Island, yet its walls lean closer at one corner and pull back at another, breaking the rectangle into a living trap. Two gaps admit air and memory. The eastern wall hides behind a later clochan, while a cross-slab waits inside the northern edge. Scally’s excavation pulled the rubble back far enough to reveal that the first wall stood before the second, and the second wall still stands beside the chamber rather than around it. The enclosure does not protect the church. It completes the chamber.

This enclosure surrounds the church (GA021-026014-) and graveyard (GA021-026026-) on High Island. Prior to excavations by Scally (2014, 42, 70, 85-94) it was barely discernible beneath mounds of rubble. The excavations revealed that it was of two phases of construction. The primary enclosure was probably rectangular in plan. Following restructuring its N side was subsequently rebuilt inside the line of the original enclosure. The resulting enclosure (9m E-W; 7m N-S) is trapezoidal in plan and all four walls are of varying lengths. Only the W and N walls are aligned with the church and this has resulted in considerable variation in space between the two structures, ranging from 2m at the SW corner to 0.7m at the SE corner. The entire area of the enclosure was paved. There are two entrance gaps, one at NE and one at NW. The outer face of the E wall is obscured by the clochan (GA021-026013-) that was built up against it and its SE corner is buttressed. A cross-slab (GA021-026047-) is embedded in the internal face of this wall, at its N end. The dating of both phases of construction of the enclosure is unclear but evidence from hearth debris indicates that the primary wall post-dates a date range of cal. AD 728-971. (Kinahan 1869, 348; Healy 1890, 673-86; Macalister 1896, 197-210; White Marshall and Rourke 2000, 99-102) The following images have been uploaded: GA021-026021----_01.JPG View from NW GA021-026021----_02.JPG Entrance gap at NE GA021-026021----_03.JPG Entrance gap at SW Compiled by: Olive Alcock Date of upload: 11 December 2015

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