What is recorded here

Hilltop enclosure in Clooncah (ballymoe By.) is a vanished Galway circle, its stone wall collapsed into pasture and its deep fosse sanded into a shallow scar. A modern field bank cuts the remains in two, while nettles still mark the outer edge where people may have stood, excluded or watching. The nearby battlefield suggests the hill has long served warning as much as ritual, and the enclosure may have been a marker born from that violence.

On a hill summit in pastureland. A large poorly preserved subcircular enclosure (NW-SE 85m, NE-SW 65m) defined by a fosse, divided in two by a modern field bank running NNE-SSW. A site inspection in 1967 (Topgr. Files, OPW) recorded that it was 'bounded by a collapsed stone wall (overgrown and giving superficial appearance of a bank). Big wide deep fosse inside'. Subsequently levelled, it is now defined by a broad shallow fosse (Wth 5m). Outside the fosse, a band of nettles and thistles is visible from WNW to N, possibly indicating the line of the outer bank/wall. Traces of a possible causeway across the fosse are visible at N. The interior is flat but is slightly lower than the exterior. A battlefield (GA007-042----) lies immediately to E. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

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