Enclosure, Greatconnell, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Greatconnell, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath the fields of Greatconnell in County Kildare, a circular enclosure roughly 37 metres across lies invisible to anyone walking the ground above it. It only becomes legible from the air, and even then only under the right conditions, appearing as a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried features influence the growth of crops or grass above them, causing subtle differences in colour and height that are invisible at ground level but readable in aerial photography.

The enclosure came to light through satellite imagery captured on Google Earth in June 2018, when the particular quality of that summer's light and crop growth made the circular outline and what appears to be an associated field system briefly legible. Circular enclosures of this kind are a common but still poorly understood feature of the Irish landscape. They may represent the remains of ring forts, also known as raths, which were enclosed farmsteads typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. At approximately 37 metres in diameter, this example falls within the size range typical of such sites. The possible field system visible alongside it hints at a wider pattern of land use in the area, though without excavation, the relationship between the two features and their precise date remain open questions.

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