Concentric enclosure, Coolpeach, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Enclosures

Concentric enclosure, Coolpeach, Co. Wexford

At Coolpeach in County Wexford, there is nothing to see at ground level, and that is precisely what makes it interesting.

Flattened into ordinary farmland, an ancient double enclosure survives only as a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried ditches and banks affect how crops grow above them, leaving faint but legible outlines that become visible from the air under the right light and seasonal conditions. What emerges, when the angle is right and the grain is ripening, is a circle within a circle pressed into the level Wexford earth.

The site consists of two concentric circular enclosures. The inner one, defined by a wide fosse (that is, a ditch dug as part of a defensive or boundary arrangement), measures roughly 35 metres in external diameter. Around it sits a larger enclosure of approximately 70 metres in diameter, defined by a narrower feature that traces the southern, western, and northern arc. Concentric enclosures of this kind are generally understood to be prehistoric or early medieval in origin, though without excavation it is impossible to assign a more precise date or purpose to the Coolpeach example. The double-ring arrangement may indicate a settlement with an outer boundary protecting a more intensively enclosed inner space, or it may reflect two phases of use at the same spot across a long period of time. The site was recorded on aerial photographs taken in 2000 and again in 2006, each pass confirming the outlines that earlier photography had already caught.

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