Enclosure, Bawnoge, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Bawnoge, Co. Wicklow

In a field in Bawnoge, County Wicklow, a circle roughly forty-five metres across lies pressed into the earth, invisible at ground level but unmistakable from the air.

The outline of what appears to be an ancient enclosure only became apparent when aerial imagery captured it in June 2015, its shape betrayed by subtle differences in vegetation or soil that centuries of farming had not quite erased.

Circular enclosures of this kind are a familiar presence in the Irish landscape, even when they cannot be seen from the ground. They are most commonly the remnants of raths or ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland typically bounded by an earthen bank and ditch, though some circular cropmark features have earlier, prehistoric origins. What makes the Bawnoge example particularly interesting is that a second possible enclosure lies approximately two hundred metres to the south, suggesting that whatever activity shaped this part of Wicklow may not have been isolated to a single site. The two features together hint at a settlement pattern rather than a solitary structure, though without excavation neither can be firmly dated or categorised.

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