Concentric enclosure, Clogorrow, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Concentric enclosure, Clogorrow, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath a ploughed field in Clogorrow, County Kildare, lies the ghost of a structure that has not been visible at ground level for a very long time. The site gives itself away only from the air, and only under the right conditions: a dry summer, a growing crop, and a camera pointed downward. What emerges in aerial imagery is a circular enclosure roughly 65 metres across sitting inside a larger, almost square perimeter measuring around 120 metres on each side. Both shapes are defined not by standing walls or earthworks but by cropmarks, the faint differential growth patterns that appear when crops growing over back-filled fosses, that is, ancient ditches that were deliberately or gradually filled in, respond differently to moisture and soil depth than the surrounding ground. The circle within the square is an unusual combination, and it is the kind of configuration that tends to catch the attention of people who spend time studying Irish archaeology from satellite imagery.

The site was identified through aerial photography, with details provided by Anthony Murphy and an observation credited to P. Reid via Bing Maps aerial view. A Google Earth image dated 28 June 2018 captures the cropmarks clearly. Beyond their shape and approximate dimensions, the precise date or purpose of these enclosures is not recorded. Concentric enclosures of this kind have appeared across Ireland in various forms, sometimes associated with early medieval ringforts or ceremonial sites of earlier prehistory, but assigning a function to this particular example without excavation would be speculation. What is certain is that the fosses, whatever their original purpose, were filled in at some point, and the land eventually returned to agriculture. The enclosure now exists as a kind of palimpsest, the earlier landscape overwritten but not entirely erased.

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