Enclosure, Kilkea Lodge Farm, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Kilkea Lodge Farm, Co. Kildare

Somewhere beneath a ploughed field at Kilkea Lodge Farm in County Kildare, the ghost of a circular enclosure survives only as a stain in the soil. It is not visible on the ground at all; the only way to see it is from the air, where changes in crop colour and growth betray the presence of buried features below. This kind of trace is known as a cropmark, and it forms when buried ditches or banks affect the moisture and nutrients available to plants directly above them, causing subtle but readable differences in how a crop ripens.

The enclosure was reported by Jean-Charles Caillere and identified through aerial imagery captured between 2004 and 2006. The cropmark outlines a fosse, which is essentially a broad ditch dug as a boundary or defensive feature, curving from the north-west around through north to the south-south-west. The overall shape, roughly circular and approximately forty metres in diameter, is consistent with a class of enclosed settlement found widely across Ireland, though the site has not been excavated and its date and function remain unconfirmed. The south-west portion of the circuit appears to have been cut off by a straight field boundary running north-west to south-east, a boundary that has itself since been levelled, leaving the enclosure truncated and the later division that damaged it also gone.

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