Enclosure, Radestown, Co. Kilkenny

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Radestown, Co. Kilkenny

There is a circle buried in a field near Radestown in County Kilkenny that nobody has excavated, walked around, or photographed from the ground in any meaningful way.

It exists, essentially, as a shadow: a cropmark visible only from the air, where the soil and the plants growing in it betray the presence of something beneath.

Cropmarks form when buried features, such as ditches or walls, affect the moisture available to crops above them. A filled-in ditch retains more water than the surrounding ground, producing a line of lusher, taller vegetation; a buried wall does the opposite. From altitude, these differences in growth read as distinct outlines. In this case, the outlines describe a circular enclosure roughly thirty metres in diameter, defined by a fosse, which is simply a ditch, with traces of a second, outer fosse visible on the north-eastern side. That double-ditch arrangement is of some interest. A single enclosing ditch is common enough across early medieval Ireland, associated with ringforts and similar enclosed settlements. A hint of an outer fosse suggests something that warranted a degree of additional definition or defence, though without excavation it is impossible to say more about the site's date or function. The enclosure was identified from aerial photographs taken in July 1990 and again in August 1996, and it has not, as far as the available record goes, been investigated further.

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Pete F
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