Ecclesiastical enclosure, Shelbaggan, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Shelbaggan, Co. Wexford

In a level pasture at Shelbaggan in County Wexford, the ground gives nothing away.

There is no ruined wall, no weathered gravestone, no obvious depression to suggest that anything of consequence ever stood here. Yet this unremarkable field conceals the outline of an early ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of oval or circular boundary that once defined the sacred precinct of an early Irish church site, separating the religious community and its burials from the secular world beyond.

The site appears on the 1839 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which records a small oval embanked enclosure measuring roughly 35 metres east to west and between 25 and 30 metres north to south, with a church indicated within it. By the time anyone looked closely at the ground, that above-ground evidence had entirely vanished beneath pasture. What restored some sense of the site's true scale was aerial photography. Vertical photographs taken in 1973 show traces of an enclosing element approximately 30 to 40 metres in diameter. More revealing still, aerial photographs from 1995 show a much larger ecclesiastical enclosure, somewhere between 80 and 90 metres across. That larger ring, invisible at ground level, suggests the site was once considerably more substantial than the 1839 map implied, with the smaller enclosure perhaps representing a later, contracted phase of use within an earlier and grander boundary.

For anyone passing through this part of south Wexford, there is little to see without the benefit of an aerial perspective. The field remains pasture, and the enclosures survive only as cropmarks or soilmarks legible from above. It is the kind of place that rewards knowing what to look for rather than what to look at.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ecclesiastical enclosure, Shelbaggan, Co. Wexford. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement