Enclosure, Inch, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Inch, Co. Kildare

At Inch in County Kildare, something lies beneath the surface of an ordinary tillage field that can only really be appreciated from above. The site is invisible at ground level, its presence betrayed only by cropmarks, the subtle discolouration in growing crops that occurs when buried ditches or walls affect the soil's moisture and nutrients differently from the surrounding ground. What those cropmarks reveal, when viewed on aerial or satellite imagery, is the ghostly outline of a substantial enclosed space that has not been a recognised feature of the landscape for a very long time.

The main feature is a sub-circular enclosure roughly 90 metres in diameter, defined by the cropmark of a fosse, the term for a ditch dug as a boundary or defensive feature. A second fosse appears to sub-divide the interior, cutting off the north-western quadrant from the rest of the enclosed area. This internal division is an intriguing detail; it suggests the space was organised for a specific purpose, whether for separating livestock, demarcating a more protected inner zone, or marking a social or functional distinction within the settlement. Radiating outward from the enclosure to the north and south are further linear cropmarks of fosses, which may represent the remnants of an associated field system, the agricultural hinterland of whatever community once used this place. A later field boundary, running north-west to south-east, cuts straight through the enclosure, evidence that by some later period the original layout had been entirely forgotten and the land reorganised without reference to it.

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Pete F
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