Enclosure, Ballybrennan Big, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Enclosures
Beneath the flat farmland of Ballybrennan Big, a large enclosure lies almost entirely invisible to anyone passing at ground level.
It reveals itself only from the air, where differences in soil moisture and crop growth trace the outline of a structure that no longer has any physical presence above ground. The shape that emerges in these aerial photographs is a broad D, roughly 130 metres along its longer axis and 90 metres across, defined by what was once a fosse, a defensive or boundary ditch cut into the earth and now long since filled in and levelled over.
A fosse of this scale suggests an enclosure of some significance, though precisely what kind of settlement or activity it once contained remains unknown. Large D-shaped enclosures of this type are found at various points across Ireland and are generally associated with early medieval activity, though without excavation it is impossible to say more about the people who dug it or why. What is certain is that the modern world has taken a small portion of it: the south-western edge has been cut away by the N25 road between Wexford town and Rosslare Harbour, leaving the ancient outline truncated at the point where tarmac and engineering works met something far older in the ground.