What is recorded here

Island Hill in County Clare still carries a faint circular scar around its church and graveyard, though grass and time have nearly erased the ditch and bank. The enclosure measured about 110 metres across, large enough to set the sacred place apart from the poor pastureland without walls or gates. It may have marked a boundary people could see at once, a round line drawing the eye inward toward prayer and burial. What is left feels less like ruin than like a suggestion, as if the hill itself remembers the shape once drawn around it.

On a prominent hill, named Island Hill on the OS maps, in undulating poor pastureland. This ecclesiastical enclosure (diam. c. 110m), was identified by Leo Swan during the course of aerial reconnaissance and he described it as ‘the indistinct traces of a large circular fosse or ditch, with a low, inner bank now virtually obliterated’ (Swan 1991, 62-3). It surrounded a church (CL016-024002-) and graveyard (CL016-024003-). On inspection in May 1999 all that was visible on the ground was berm (L 35m; Wth 3.5m) curving around the hill from SW to W, c. 20m from the graveyard wall. (Swan 1991, 112, Pl. 6.26) Compiled by: Olive Alcock and Lynda McCormack Date of upload: 22 April 2022

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