Enclosure, Urlingford, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Urlingford, Co. Kilkenny

On the edge of Urlingford in County Kilkenny, a faint D-shaped outline in rough pasture has gone largely unnoticed at ground level for a very long time.

It measures roughly 64 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west, curving away to the east, with an existing field boundary forming its western side. The ground here is marshy, a stream runs some 80 metres to the east, and the land was recorded on the 1900 Ordnance Survey six-inch map revision as liable to flood. None of that makes for a particularly inviting patch of countryside, which may be precisely why whatever lies here has attracted so little attention.

The feature was identified as a possible enclosure only after an aerial photograph was examined, taken on 22 April 2001. Enclosures of this general type are among the most common and least understood monuments in the Irish landscape. They can represent the remains of a ringfort, a monastic precinct, a medieval farmstead, or any number of earlier land-use boundaries, and without excavation it is rarely possible to say which. What the D-shape here does suggest is that the western boundary was not purpose-built but borrowed from a pre-existing field division, a practical choice that would have saved considerable labour. The waterlogged surroundings add another layer of interest. Marginal, flood-prone land was sometimes deliberately chosen for settlement in early medieval Ireland, offering natural drainage boundaries and some degree of defensive advantage, though it also made for difficult living.

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Pete F
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